BS 

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Class 
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FIKST LESSONS 



ON 






THE BIBLE. 



Written for fjfs .Suntfas -Sc^ocl in OTorccster, 



BY 



EDWARD H. HALL, 



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BOSTON: 

UNITARIAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL SOCIETY, 
7 Teemont Place. 

1882. 






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Copyright, 1882, 
By the Unitarian Sunday-School Society. 







University Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



PREFACE. 



These Lessons are intended to be used at whatever 
age it is thought best for children to begin the study 
of the Bible. They have been tried in my own 
Sunday School by scholars from ten to seventeen 
years old. 

The plan must be left to explain, and, if possible, 
justify itself. I will only say that the general idea 
was to take up simply the salient points of the Old 
and New Testaments, without confusing the scholar's 
mind with such details as have no necessary bearing 
on the progress of events. The subject has been 
treated biographically ; partly, because the young 
mind is more interested in persons than in abstract 
ideas, partly, because the whole Bible really grew 
out of individual thought and life. 

So far as the form is concerned, it will be under- 
stood that the Notes are intended to supply the 
scholars with the material needed for shaping their 
answers, though on no account to be committed to 
memory by them ; while the References are for the 
use of teachers, that they may follow out the topics 
with such minuteness as seems to them best, or as 
the age of the scholars admits. The few references 



IV PREFACE, 

to general literature and art will suggest, it is hoped, 
a still wider use of these helps by intelligent teachers. 
The Schnorr illustrations referred to are a series of 
Bible wood-cuts published some years ago in Leipsic, 
of which the Old Testament subjects are treated 
with considerable spirit and accuracy of detail, those 
of the New Testament being very inferior. The 
Illustrated Renan refers to an abbreviated edition of 
Renan's Vie de Jesus, published in Paris in 1870, 
with wood-cuts by Godefroy Durand. It is inexpen- 
sive, and the treatment ot* the subjects is so much 
superior to anything else within my knowledge that 
it seems to me the only successful attempt to repre- 
sent pictorially the life of Jesus. I should consider 
the study of the New Testament as here proposed 
quite incomplete without these illustrations. It is 
possible that they may soon be published in separate 
form in portfolio. 

It will be understood that the " Bible for Young 
People" and the "Bible for Learners" are the 
English and American editions of the same book. I 
have made my references to the " Bible for Young 
People," because the American reprint had not ap- 
peared when these lessons were written. 

E. H. H. 

Worcester, February, 1882. 



NOTE. 

'No important changes have been made in the present edi- 
tion, except to add to the references to the " Bible for Young 
People'' corresponding references to the '^ Bible for Learn- 
ers," designated by the abbreviation B. L. 

As I have been appealed to by teachers who have not 
time to consult many books of reference, or cannot reach 
them, to mention those which I consider the most useful and 
at the same time the most easily procured, I add this brief 
list for their convenience : " The Bible for Learners," Van 
Lennep's " Bible Lands," Edersheim's "Temple and its Ser- 
vices," Edersheim's " Sketches of Jewish Social Life," Allen's 
" Hebrew Men and Times," and either Keim's " Jesus of 
Nazara," or some other Life of Jesus. 

E. H. H. 
Cambridge, October, 1882. 



LESSONS. 



Lesson Page 

I. Palestine 7 

II. The Jews 10 

III. Villages and Cities 12 

IV. Social Life 14 

V. Religion 17 

VI. Synagogues 19 

VII. Religious Customs 21 

VIII. Abraham 24 

IX. Moses 27 

X. Teachings of Moses 30 

XI. Joshua and the Judges 33 

XII. Samuel 37 

XIII. David 40 

XIV. Solomon 44 

XV. JosiAH 48 

XVI. Jeremiah 61 

XVIL Ezra 54 

XVIIL The Maccabees 68 

XIX. The Old Testament 61 

XX. Jesus 67 

XXI. Childhood op Jesus 71 

XXII. Beginning of Jesus' Ministry 75 



Vlll LESSONS. 

Lesson Page 

XXIII. How Jesus Preached . 79 

XXIV. Jesus and the Common People 83 

XXV. Companions of Jesus 86 

XX VI. Works of Healing 90 

XXVIL Jesus the Christ 93 

XXVIII. The New Religion 96 

XXIX. Character of Jesus 100 

XXX. Opposition to Jesus 103 

XXXI. Jesus in Jerusalem 105 

XXXII. Death of Jesus 108 

XXXIII. The Gathering of the Disciples 112 

XXXIV. Beginning of the Christian Church .... 115 
XXXV. The New Testament 120 



FIRST LESSORS ON THE BIBLE. 



LESSON I. 
PALESTINE. 



1. In what part of the world is Palestine ? 

2. How large is it compared with Massachusetts ? 

3. Are there mountains in it, and if so, how high are they ? 

4. What lakes are there ? 

5. "Why is one called the Dead Sea ? 

6. What is the largest river ? 

7. Is Palestine further north or further south than this place ? 

8. What kind of climate has it, and what seasons ? 

9. What grows there ? 

10. Name two or three of its cities or villages. 

Texts: Deut. viii. 7, 8; Num. xiii. 23; Jer. xlvi. 18; Matt. vi. 28,29,30.1 

NOTES. 

Palestine is about 140 miles long by 40 wide ; Massachusetts 
(without Cape Cod) about 160 by 50. So they are of very 
nearly the same size, only one runs lengthwise north and south, 
the other east and west. 

It is much more mountainous than Massachusetts, as the map 
shows. Some of the towns are situated higher than the top of 

1 Each child is to commit one or two of the texts to memory, if the teacher 
chooses. 



8 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

Mt. Wachusett, and the hills just north of Palestine are much 
higher than Mt. Washington, and are always covered with 
snow.i 

In the north lies the Sea of Galilee or Tiberias, which is about 
four times as large as Lake Quinsigamond; towards the south 
is the Dead Sea, which is a little larger than Lake George. The 
water of the Dead Sea is very salt and bitter to the taste, and no 
fish or other animal can live in it. It used to be supposed, in old 
times, that birds which tried to fly over it fell into the water 
dead. It is more dense and buoyant than any water you have 
ever seen, so that if you were to bathe in it, you could not sink 
if you tried ; and if you sailed on it, your boat would be an inch 
or two higher out of water than on other lakes. The Dead Sea 
does not seem to have any outlet, so that all the water that the 
Jordan pours into it must evaporate instead of running off. 

The Jordan is the only long river. It rises north of the Sea 
of Galilee, 1,700 feet above the sea, and when it reaches the 
Dead Sea it is 1,300 feet below the sea, so that it seems to be 
rushing most of the way down a very steep hill. Some travel- 
lers describe it as a " continuous waterfall." In some places it 
is very deep, in others, at some seasons of the year, you can walk 
across it. 

The latitude of Palestine is about 31° to 33"^, very nearly the 
same as the south part of Georgia. From October to March it 
is rainy, from April to September very hot. Crops are harvest- 
ed in April and May. The hot summer sun withers the flowers 
and grass quickly, and leaves the country bare. Barley and wheat 
are the chief grains ; and beside these are grapes in very large 
clusters, pomegranates, figs, cedar and olive trees, and bright- 
colored oleanders, anemones, tulips, and poppies. The northern 
parts are much more fertile than the southern. Jerusalem, which 
staiids on high land in the south, is the most important city. 
Bethlehem is a village of 4,000 people, five miles away. Naza- 
reth is a still smaller village in a pretty valley among the hills, 
not far from the Sea of Galilee. 

1 Lebanon and Hermon are 10,000 ft.; Tabor, 1,800; Carrael, 1,500; 
Wachusett, 2,008; Holyoke, 1,120; Jerusalem, 2,610. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 9 

REFERENCES. 

Stanley's ''Sinai and Palestine" (chap, ii.); Thomson's " Land and the 
Book;" Van Lennep's "Bible Lands;" i Geikie's "Life of Christ" (chap. 
ii.); Smith's "Bible Dictionary, or Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geog- 
raphy" (art. Palestine); Kinglake's "Eothen;" Warburton's "Crescent 
and Cross ; " " Our Work in Palestine; " Martineau's *' Eastern Life." 

Use also a raised map of Palestine, and photographs of places and scenery ; 
also, Schnorr's "Bible Pictures," No. 58.2 

1 See chap. vi. for trees and flowers. 2 Bibel in Bildern, Leipzig, 1855. 



LESSON 11. 

THE JEWS. 

1. Who lived in Palestine in old times ? 

2. What language did they speak ? 

3. How were they governed ? 

4. Who were the Romans ? 

5. What can yon tell about the Greeks ? 

6. Point out Rome and Greece on the map. 

Texts: Joshua xxiv. 2; Luke ii. 1; Rom. x. 12; John xii. 20. 

NOTES. 

The people of Palestine were generally called Jews, from the 
name of one of their ancestors, Judah, just as our country is 
called America and we Americans; but other people often called 
them Hebrews, because they came from the East across the Eu- 
phrates.^ 

Their language was called Hebrew, and was something like 
what the Arabs speak to-day. The letters were quite different 
from ours, and the words on a page must be read from right to 
left. 

For a great many years the Jews were an independent nation, 
and had kings of their own; but about 2,000 years ago the Ro- 
mans, who were great conquerors, took Palestine and made it a 
Roman province, just as Canada is now a British province. Un- 
der the Romans, their rulers were sometimes called kings, some- 
times tetrarchs, sometimes governors. 

You will find Rome on the river Tiber. It was nearly 800 
years old at that time, and had been a little kingdom once, then a 
kind of republic, then an empire. It was a warlike city and had 
conquered almost all the other nations of the world, bringing 
many Eastern kings to Rome in triumph. 

1 Hebrew means "from beyond." 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 11 

Another important nation was Greece, not so powerful as Rome, 
but much superior to it and to the rest of the world in literature 
and art. When the Romans wanted fine buildings or beautiful 
statues, they had to send for Greeks k) make them. Before the 
Romans conquered Palestine, the Greeks, under Alexander the 
Great, had invaded the East, and left their customs and language 
behind them ; so that in Palestine the Greek language was spoken 
almost as much as the Hebrew. 

REFEKENCES. 

Van Lennep's "Bible Lands" (pp. 383, 386, 392); Geikie's "Life of 
Christ" (chap, iii., iv.); Mahaffy's "Old Greek Life" (Primer); Mahaffy's 
" Social Life in Greece ; " Creighton's "Rome " (Primer) ; Smith's " Smaller 
History of Rome;" Ware's "Zenobia" (Letter xviii). Show the children 
a Hebrew Bible ; also pictures of Roman triumphs or Greek statues. 



LESSON III. 
VILLAGES AND CITIES. 

1. How did the country people in Palestine live, and what 
did they do? 

2. The city people ? 

3. How did people travel in those lands ? 

4. How did their cities differ from ours ? 

5. How did their houses differ from ours ? 

6. How did they dress ? 

Texts: Levit. xix. 9, 10; Isa. iii. 18; Matt. iii. 4; v. 15, 40; vii. 13, 14; 
X. 27 ; xxiv. 17 ; Mark ii. 4 ; Luke ii. 8 ; Heb. xiii. 2. 

NOTES. 

All through Palestine were little villages upon the hill -tops 
and in the valleys, occupied by farmers and shepherds. Many 
of the same crops which grow here w^ere raised there, but their 
ploughs and other farming implements would look to us very 
odd. The grain was often trodden out by horses or cattle. There 
were no fences between their fields, and during the harvest the 
poor people were allowed to follow the reapers and pick up what- 
ever was left behind. Their houses were low, plain buildings of 
brick or rough stones and mud, with hardly any windows, and 
but two rooms, one for the family and one for the cattle. When 
they had a fire it was built in the middle of the room, and the 
smoke found its way out as it could through a hole in the roof. 

In the cities were carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, smiths, pot- 
ters, and other working people ; and even those who were not 
obliged to work were generally taught some trade. Traffic be- 
tween different places in the East was carried on by means of 
caravans, long processions of camels, mules, and asses, laden 
with all sorts of goods. As one of the main roads from Damas- 
cus to the Mediterranean passed near the Sea of Galilee, this 
brought much trade to those regions. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 13 

People had to travel generally on foot or on asses, and de- 
pended on the people of the country to entertain them. Eastern 
people were very hospitable, and made it a rule to welcome all 
strangers. They had many pleasant customs in their treatment 
of guests. On some of the roads were inns or caravansaries 
where travellers could sleep, but any one entered who chose, and 
slept there without paying. 

The cities had walls about them, with high watch-towers and 
strong gateways. The gates were closed at night, but stood 
open through the day, and the citizens met there to talk and 
lounge and trade. The streets were narrow, with few sidewalks, 
and the houses often jutted out overhead so as almost to touch. 
The houses were low, with fiat roofs, and stairs leading up to the 
roof from the outside. Sometimes a foot-passage led from one 
roof to another. The large houses were built around a court- 
yard, in which were fountains and trees. The people lived 
chiefly in the open air, so that the roof was as important a part 
of the house as our parlors are. Families sat there, received 
their friends there, ate and slept there. What we should miss 
most in their houses would be chairs; as they all sat cross-legged 
on the floor or on couches. When it was cold the room was 
w^armed by a little charcoal burning in a pan or on a low stand. 
Rich people had candles to burn, but the poor must have gone 
to bed as soon as it was dark. 

Both men and w^omen wore long flowing robes gathered around 
the waist by straps or gay sashes. There was an under-tunic of 
cotton or camel's hair, and an outer cloak or robo of striped 
cotton or silk. The men wore bright turbans; the women, caps 
covered with a handkerchief and veil. Instead of shoes they wore 
sandals. The women were fond of jewelry, and, besides neck- 
laces and ear-rings, often wore nose-rings, and also ankle-rings 
which tinkled as they walked. 

REFERENCES. 

Van Lennep's *' Bible Lands" (chap, iv.-vii., xii., illustration on p. 805); 
Thomson's "Land and Book;" P^dersheim's "Sketches of Jewish Social 
Life" (chap, iii.-vi., xi.-xiii.) ; Martineau's "Eastern Life;" Conder's 
" Tent- Work in Palestine; " Robinson's " Biblical Researches in Palestine; " 
" Rabbi Jeshua, " pp. 36-39; Gannett's " Childhood of Jesus " (Lesson ii.); 
Schnorr, 38, 84, 85, 183. 



LESSON IV. 

SOCIAL LIFE. 

1. Tell something about the out-of-door life in Palestine. 

2. About the home life. 

3. Which do you think you should like best, their way of life 
or ours? 

4. How did they treat their guests ? 

5. What musical instruments did they have ? 

6. What kind of schools and studies did children have ? 

Texts: Levit. xix. 32; 2 Sam. xix. 8; Job xxix. 7, 8; Prov. xxiv. 7; 
Ex. XX. 12; Col. iii.20. 

NOTES. 

The Jews, like all Eastern people, lived much out-of-doors, 
and carried on all sorts of business in the city streets. The older 
citizens sat in the great gateways and talked ; shop-keepers sat 
outside their booths, shouting to passers to come and buy ; country 
people brought their fruit and eggs to sell in the city square; 
religious teachers called rabbis walked about the streets, gather- 
ing little groups of listeners. It was often a very exciting and 
noisy scene. 

Their family life was full of pretty customs, though it would 
seem to you very strict and religious. Long prayers were said 
every morning and evening; hands were washed and prayers 
repeated before and after every meal. On Friday night the 
house was always decorated for the Sabbath, and when the 
father came home he repeated to each child an old Hebrew bless- 
ing. I am afraid that children are not quite so respectful or 
obedient to their parents now-a-days as they were then, and that 
old people are not treated with so much thoughtfulness or 
reverence. 

!N"ames were quite different from those given to-day, as there 
were no family names at all, like Jones or Smith, but people 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 15 

were generally distinguished from each other by adding the 
place where they lived, as if one of you. instead of being called 
Henry Rice, were called Henry of Worcester, or Main Street 
Henry. J^ew names were often made for children when they 
were born. Girls w^ere sometimes called after flowers, or birds, 
or trees. 

The Jews had a morning and an evening meal. The tables 
were small and low, and the family sat around them on the 
floor, and got along very well without knives or forks, a dish of 
water and a towel being passed around, after dinner. When 
there were guests at dinner, they w^ere fond of telling stories and 
giving out riddles and proverbs to be guessed. 

Guests w^ere always received very cordially, with a great many 
bows and embraces, and were put into the best room on the roof, 
and treated as though they gave great pleasure by their coming. 
The master of the house often met them at the gate, held their 
stirrup while they dismounted, washed their feet when they came 
into the house, w^aited on them at table, and went part w^ay on 
the road with them when they left. 

They had musical instruments for their dances and songs, and 
also for their religious services ; some like our guitars and violins ; 
some like our drums and tambourines. 

School children had not quite such hard studies or so many of 
them as most of you ; for they w^ere not allowed to learn about 
other people or foreign languages, and there was not much to 
learn about their own. Their only book was the Jewish Law or 
Scripture. The school rooms were all connected with the 
churches. The teacher was a sort of minister called a hazzan, 
who sat on a cushion at one end of the room, while the children, 
after taking off their shoes, squatted around on the floor. Each 
child held a roll of parchment in its hand, and they either recited 
together passages from the Scripture, or studied their lesson 
aloud, each trying to make more noise than the rest. Chil- 
dren began to learn the alphabet at 3 or 5, and went to school 
at 6, to read and write. As it was a hot country there w^ere 
no lessons betw^een 10 o'clock and 3; and July and August w^ere 
considered vacation months, because school was kept then only 
four hours. 



I 



16 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

REFERENCES. 

Van Lennep's " Bible Lands " (chap, vi.-viii.); Thomson's *'Land and 
Book" (pp. 182, 184, &c.); Edersheim's "Jewish Social Life" (chap, 
vi.-ix.); Smith's " BibleDictionary " (art. House, &c.); " Rabbi Jeshua," 
pp. 23-26; illustrations in Renan's "Vie de Jesus" (pp. 12, 18); Manning's 
*' Those Holy Fields ; " i Van Lennep's " Oriental Album." 2 

1 Illustrations. 2 Illustrations. 



LESSON V. 
RELIGION. 

1. Whom did the Jews worship ? 

2. How did they worship ? 

3. Where was the Temple, and what can you tell about it ? 

4. What kind of services were held there ? 

5. Tell something about the priests ? 

Texts: Ex. xxii. 29; 1 Kings v. 5; Ps. xxiv. l;l xlviii. 1;2 xcii. ;3 
Isa. i. 11; Micah vi. 8; Jer. xi. 13. 

NOTES. 

In early times the Jews, like the other nations about them, 
worshipped several gods, but in later days they worshipped 
one God as we do, and called him Jehovah (or Yahweh).^ But 
their ideas about God were very different from ours. Like other 
Eastern people, they thought God would not be kind to them or 
forgive them when they did wrong, unless they gave him some- 
thing that would please him. So when they came to worship 
him they brought with them the first fruits from their fields, 
and their best oxen or sheep or doves as offerings. At first they 
even sacrificed their children to him, thinking he would like that- 
gift better than any other; but as they grew more civilized this 
cruel custom was given up. 

Their chief place of worship was the Temple at Jerusalem, a 
building not much larger than this church, but built of marble 
and gold, with other rich materials, surrounded by large terraces 
and splendid porticos with tall columns, and placed upon one of 

1 Special Psalm for Sunday. 2 Psalm for Monday. 

3 Psalm for Sabbath. 

4 Any one who prefers the uncouth term Yahweh (which is undoubtedly 
somewhat nearer the original name than Jehovah) can use it. Excellent rea- 
sons for doing so may be found in Bible for Young, ii. 22, or Knappert's 
Relig. of Israel, pp. 8, 34. 

2 



18 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

the highest hills in the city. The building itself was looked upon 
as a house for Jehovah to live in, and was too sacred for any but 
priests to enter, so the people gathered around it and worshipped 
in the open air. 

As the people could not offer sacrifices or take much part in 
the service themselves, there were great numbers of priests to act 
for them. The priests were divided into twenty-four classes, 
one of which was always on duty at the Temple"^. They wore 
robes of pure white linen, with a bonnet and long linen girdle. 
At their head was the High Priest, the only one who ever went 
into the inner room of the Temple. He wore very splendid 
robes of blue and gold, with a breastplate covered with jew^els, 
a mitre, and a golden frontlet. 

There were services in the Temple every day, morning and 
evening. At this daily service a lamb was killed and offered 
on the altar, trumpets were blown calling the people together, 
incense was burned, and prayers repeated, and then a large 
choir of priests chanted a hymn or psalm, accompanied by cym- 
bals or other instrumental music. Sometimes a Psalm ^ was 
sung verse by verse by the priests, the people responding Hallelu- 
jah (Praise Jehovah) after each verse. Many of these hymns, 
written at different times, were collected together, with other 
Hebrew poems, and called the Book of Psalms. 

REFERENCES. 

Edersheim's "Temple and its Services" (pp. 22, 72, 52, 142, 191, &c.); 
VanLennep's " Bible Lands;" " Land and Book; " Smith's " Bible Diction- 
ary" (art. Temple. Priest, &c.); "Vie de Jdsus " (illustration on p. 152); 
Stanley's "Jewish Church" (i. 186, &c., ii. 225-251); Geikie's "Life of 
Christ" (chap.vii.); Kuenen's "Religion of Israel" (i. 18, 96,223); "Jew- 
ish History, told for Children;" Fergusson's "Pland-Book of Architec- 
ture," i. 201. 

1 See Ps. cxiii. 



LESSON VI. 

SYNAGOGUES. 

1. What is a synagogue ? 

2. What was the difference between the synagogue and the 
temple ? 

3. Describe the service in the synagogue. 

4. Did the Jews have prayers or singing in their service ? 

5. Did they have any Sunday Schools ? 

Texts: 1 Chron. xvi. 36; Matt.vi. 5, 7; Acts xiii. 15. 

NOTES. 

For a great many years the Jews had no place of worship ex- 
cept the Temple, but afterwards other houses called synagogues 
were built in all the larger towns and cities. The synagogue 
was a kind of church, but was used on Saturday instead of Sun- 
day, and generally on Monday and Thursday also. It was a 
plain-looking building, standing on high ground where all could 
see it, and always so placed that every one in going in should 
face toward the Temple at Jerusalem, where Jehovah was sup- 
posed to dwell. Inside there were no seats, but only a platform 
with a high desk near the middle of the room, and behind it a 
niche holding a box or ark filled with rolls of parchment. The 
niche was the holiest part of the room, and had a curtain hang- 
ing before it, and a lamp always burning above it. The men 
were in one part of the room, the women in another, and all 
either stood or sat upon the floor. 

There was no special minister for a synagogue, as in our 
churches, but 'Hhe rulers" of the synagogue chose any one they 
pleased each day to conduct the services. He began by repeat- 
ing prayers and verses in regular order, the people answering 
" Amen; " then rolls from the ark were handed him, and he went 
up into the desk or pulpit, and read passages from what the Jews 
call the '' Law and the Prophets; " afterwards, by way of a ser- 



20 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

mon, he sat down and explained what he had read, or made a 
short address. During the prayers the people stood with their 
hands folded, or knelt, or else threw themselves flat upon their 
faces. 

In early times there were no prayers at all in the Jewish service, 
and there never were any like those we hear in our churches. But 
in later times fixed forms of prayer were used in the synagogues 
and also at home and on the streets. Some thought that the 
more prayers they said the better they were, especially if men 
saw them doing it ; so they were often seen standing at the syn- 
agogue door and repeating several prayers before going in. 

There were no priests in the synagogue and no altar, so that 
no one went there to offer sacrifices, but only to listen to the 
Scriptures and prayers. There was no music or singing as in 
the Temple. Of course those who lived away from Jerusalem 
had no place of worship except the synagogue, but all the Jews 
were expected to go to the Temple three times a year. 

There was no difference between Sunday Schools and day 
schools, for all schools were held in the synagogue, and children 
studied the Scriptures every day. Whether they sang hymns or 
had libraries, I do not know; but they were all in one class and 
the teacher was always a man. 

REFERENCES. 

Edersheim's " Jewish Social Life ; " Edersheim's "Temple and its Ser- 
vices;'^ "Bible Lands" (pp. 593,648, 719, 721, 758); " Land and Book ; " 
Smith's "Dictionary" (art. Synagogue); "Illustrated Renan" (p. 85); 
"Bible for Young People" (v. 178); (B. L. iii. 140). 



LESSON VIL 
RELIGIOUS CUSTOMS. 

1. What was the Jewish Sabbath ? 

2. What did the Jews mean by Feasts ? 

3. What was a Phylactery ? 

4. What other peculiar customs can you mention ? 

5. What was a Rabbi ? 

Texts: Ex. xx. 8; Num. xv. 38, 39; Deut. vi. 8, 9; xvi. 13; Matt, xxiii. 
5, 7, 8; xxiv. 20; Mark ii. 23, U. 

NOTES. 

Sabbath means day of rest, and was the Jewish name for 
Saturday. It was their holiest day, and was kept much more 
strictly, both at home and at the Temple, than Sunday is with 
us. It began on Friday evening, as the Jews considered sunset 
the beginning of the day instead of the end. When three loud 
blasts of a trumpet were heard from the Temple, Friday after- 
noon, every one knew that the Sabbath had begun. All w^ork 
of every kind was stopped immediately, a lamp was lighted in 
each house, the rooms were decorated, and the table spread. In 
the Temple and in the synagogues the most important services 
of the week w^ere held; at home the best clothes w^ere worn; 
meals were better than on any other day ; no hard lessons were 
learned, and the poor and strangers were sure to be remembered. 
It was considered very wicked for either man or beast to do any 
work on the Sabbath , and there were many strange laws telling 
them what to do and what not to do. Travellers were forbidden 
to go more than a mile on that day. Some even thought that it 
was wrong for flax to be drying itself on the Sabbath, or for 
wool to be dyeing, 

Several times in the year there were special services at the 
Temple, with great feasting and rejoicing, and immense crow^ds 
gathered from all parts of Palestine. These were called Feasts, 



22 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

and were in celebration of some important events in Jewish his- 
tory. Some lasted seven or eight days, and more than a million 
strangers sometimes attended them, and crowded Jerusalem to 
overflowing. At such times every house took in as many guests 
as it could, and a curtain hanging before a door meant that there 
was still room for more. The pilgrims came to Jerusalem in 
long processions, singing hymns, and bringing offerings as they 
marched. At one feast, held in October, they lived for seven 
days in huts of green boughs or in tents (Tabernacles), in mem- 
ory of the time when the whole nation were wandering about 
with tents. These huts were set up all around Jerusalem, and 
even in the streets and on the roofs. At another feast (Dedica- 
tion) the Temple and all the houses in Jerusalem were illuminated 
for eight nights. In each house, one candle was lighted for each 
member of the family the first night, two for each member the 
second night, and so on through the week. Some of these pro- 
cessions of pilgrims were very picturesque, as when the ^' first 
fruits " were brought to the Temple. First came a man playing 
a pipe, then a bullock with gilded horns and garlands, then pil- 
grims, singing as they came, and carrying gold and silver baskets 
filled with fruit. The psalms called *' Songs of Degrees'' or 
" Steps," 1 were sung by these processions. 

Some of the Jews who were very superstitious, or wished to 
make a show of their religion, wore singular little cases tied to 
their arms, or bound upon their foreheads, called Phylacteries. 
In these cases were little strips of parchment covered with texts, 
which were thought to give the wearer great sanctity, protecting 
him from danger by their magic power, and driving away evil 
spirits. It was supposed that wounds could be healed by touch- 
ing them, or children put to sleep. There was another charm 
quite similar to this, called a Mesusah, which was hung in a 
metal case on door-posts, either inside the house or outside, for 
each one who went in or out to touch as he passed, and then kiss 
his fingers very reverently, as though receiving a blessing from 
it.2 Another peculiar belief among the Jews was that the fringe 

1 Ps. cxx., cxxi. 

2 On the parchment were the texts, Deut. vi. 4-9 ; xi. 13-21. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 23 

of a dress was sacred, as it was to remind the wearer of God's 
commandments. 1 Many made their fringes wide, therefore, to 
be thought very religious ; and sick people thought that by touch- 
ing the edge of a great man's robe they would be healed. 

Learned men among the Jews were treated with great rever- 
ence, and called Masters, or Rabbis. Some had young men 
studying the law with them ; others taught in the synagogues, or 
gathered whom they could find in the streets and preached to 
them. 

REFERENCES. 

Edersheim's "Jewish Social Life" (chap.vii.); Edersheim's "Temple and 
Its Services" (chap, ix., xiv., xvii.); "Land and Book;" Smith's "Bible 
Die." (art. Phylactery, Feasts, &c.) ; "Bible Lands; " Helon's "Pilgrimage 
to Jerusalem," i.; Pliimptre's "Bible Educator," pp. 59, 66 (Fringes and 
Phylacteries). 

1 Num. XV. 37-40. 



LESSON VIII. 

ABRAHAM. 

1. Who was Abraham? 

2. What old book is there that tells about him? 

3. Do you think this book was written while he lived? 

4. How does such a book differ from the histories that are 
written now? 

5. What countries did Abraham live in? 

6. Who were his wives and children? 

7. Tell something about Ishmael. 

8. Tell something about Isaac. 

9. Who were Esau and Jacob? 

10. Who are meant by the Patriarchs? 

Texts: Gen. i. 1, 2; viii. 22; ix. 13; xi. 4; xiii. 2; xxi. 14; xxii. 2; 
XXV. 27; xxviii. 12; Matt. iii. 9. 

NOTES. 

One of the oldest ancestors whom the Jews could remember 
was Abraham. He lived in very old times, many hundred years 
before there were any books, and before any one could read or 
write, so that we can know nothing about him except what hap- 
pened to be remembered through all those years before writing 
began. Of course such accounts must be very imperfect, for peo- 
ple do not always repeat things just as they heard them, and 
often like to make a good story out of a very little incident; 
but this is all that we have, and it may be that when so many 
things had to be committed to memory, memories were better 
than they are now. At any rate, each generation had a great 
many anecdotes to tell of those who had lived before them, and 
fathers were fond of repeating these to their children, sometimes 
in prose, sometimes in poetry. All early history was made up of 
stories like these. One of the oldest collections of such tales and 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 25 

poems is the Book of Genesis. It begins with a poetic account 
of the creation of the world, and then tells of a great flood which 
the Jews thought had covered the whole earth, and then how the 
only family which escaped the flood was scattered over many 
countries, and began to speak many different languages. After 
this it tells about Abraham and his descendants. 

Abraham came from a mountain region far north of Palestine, 
near where the great river Euphrates rises. The people of that 
country wandered about in little bands or tribes, settling down 
wherever they found good pasturage and water for their sheep 
and cattle. From the description of them in Genesis, they must 
have looked quite like the Bedouin Arabs, who rove through the 
same regions to-day, living in black tents, carrying their property 
on camels and asses, with long troops of sheep and cattle driven 
by slaves, and with a picturesque chief or Sheik dressed in a long 
red cloak, with a bright handkerchief bound around his head and 
floating over his shoulders. Abraham seems to have been one of 
the most powerful of these shepherd-princes, " very rich in cat- 
tle, in silver, and in gold," and having many slaves and follow- 
ers. With these he once crossed the Euphrates, and began a 
long journey southward, partly in search of fresh pastures, and 
partly, as the story says, because he had outgrown the religious 
customs of his people, and believed that God was calling him 
aw^ay from their idolatries. After going as far south as Egypt, 
and being driven back, he settled down at last just west of the 
Dead Sea, among some tribes called Canaanites, where he stayed 
the rest of his life. 

In those rude and barbarous days men had several wives instead 
of only one, and the more wealthy and powerful the chief the more 
wives he had. One of Abraham's wives was Sarah, a woman of 
his own race; another was Hagar, an Egyptian; another was 
Keturah. His oldest child Ishmael, the son of Hagar, was very 
dear to Abraham, and would have been chief after him, had not 
the mother and child been driven out, by Sarah's hatred, into 
the Arabian wilderness among the serpents and wild beasts. 
The account of this in Genesis is very touching, and tells how 
Hagar and Ishmael were saved, and how the descendants of 
Ishmael became wild Arab tribes wandering through the deserts. 



26 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

Meantime, Isaac, Sarah's son, remained with his father, and 
became chief after his death. 

One of the most interesting stories in Genesis tells how Abra- 
ham, who had always seen children sacrificed to the gods, 
dreamed once that God commanded him to offer his boy Isaac. So 
he took Isaac to a mountain, built an altar, and put wood upon it ; 
but just as he was about to kill the child, his love for him made 
him feel that God could not require such an act, and he deter- 
mined to offer a ram instead. The Jews always remembered 
this incident, and believed that God put the ram there on pur- 
pose to convince Abraham that he did not really wish him to do 
so cruel a thing. It was a long time before they wholly gave up 
this inhuman practice, but this was probably the first step towards 
doing so. The last step was not taken, of course, until they 
learned that God did not wish any life sacrificed to him, whether 
of children or of animals ; but this they could not understand till 
after many centuries of progress. 

Isaac afterwards had two sons called Esau and Jacob, and the 
rest of Genesis tells of them and their descendants. Esau was 
the older, but Jacob was the mother's favorite, and succeeded, by 
some very ingenious tricks, in getting away from his brother the 
rights that belonged to him, and making himself a rich and power- 
ful chieftain. Another name for Jacob was Israel, and after him 
the Jews were often called Israelites. Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob were called Patriarchs. 

REFEEENCES. 

Stanley's "Jewish Church" (i. 1-56); ''Bible for Young People" 
(i. 140-260); (B. L. i. 108-201); Toy's " History- of the Religion of Israel " 
(O. Test. Primer); Heilprin's " Histor. Poetry of the Ancient Hebrews " (i. 
1-45); Higginson's "Spirit of the Bible" (i. 149); Bartram's ''Stories 
from Book of Genesis ; " Frothingham's " Stories of the Patriarchs ; " Ewald's 
" H|st. of Israel" (i.); Hedge's " Primeval World of Heb. Tradition " (chap, 
xi.); Photograph of Guercino's " Hagar and Ishmael;" Schnorr's "Bible 
Pictures " (1-37) ; Wesley's Hymn, — " Come, oh thou traveller unknown; " 
Hymn, "Nearer, my God, to Thee." 



LESSON IX. 

MOSES. 

1. What can you tell about Joseph ? 

2. What happened to the Jews in Egypt ? 

3. AVho was Moses, and how did he grow up ? 

4. What did he do for his people ? 

5. How did they escape from Egypt ? 

6. When was this ? 

7. AVhere is the story told ? 

8. Where did they go on leaving Egypt ? 

9. What can you tell about their wanderings ? 

Texts: Gen. xxxvii. 3; Ex. ii. 3; iii. 5; xv. 21; Ps. Ixxvii. 16; Ixxviii. 
13; Acts vii. 22. 

NOTES. 

One of the oldest and prettiest stories in Genesis tells how 
Joseph, one of Jacob's twelve sons, was sold by his brothers to 
some travelling merchants, who carried him to Egypt, where he 
became a powerful prince. Afterwards he sent for his father 
and brothers, told them who he was, and gave them a home 
in Egypt, w^here they lived always afterwards. After a great 
many years, when they had grown from a single family into 
a large tribe, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, began to treat them very 
cruelly, and finally made slaves of them, to work in his fields 
and help build his splendid palaces and cities and pyramids. 
As they w^ere much more barbarous than the Egyptians, they 
submitted to this for a long time ; but at last a remarkable man 
appeared among them, who determined to free them from their 
slavery. His name was Moses; and many wonderful stories 
were told, in Jewish and other books, about his birth and early 
life. He was said to have grown up in the royal court, and as 
Egypt was then the most civilized and learned country in the 
world, and had a purer religion than other nations about it, 



28 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

Moses became a -wiser man, with much higher religious ideas, 
than his Hebrew brethren. Fortunately he did not despise 
them on that account, or lose his love for them, but only longed 
to set them free. One of the earliest stories about him is of his 
killing an Egyptian whom he saw beating a Hebrew slave ; so 
that he had to flee from Egypt ai\d live in another country. 
After some years he returned, but foand it a much harder task 
than he thought to free a people who had become so degraded 
by slavery that they had no desire for freedom. As they had 
always lived in Egypt, they did not wish to live anywhere else, 
or to make a nation by themselves. Beside this, the king was 
very unwilling to lose his slaves, and only made them work the 
harder when Moses urged him to let them go. But by and by, 
as the story tells us, the land was overrun by frogs and locusts 
and flies and other plagues, which the king thought Moses had 
brought upon him, and so he was frightened into allowing the 
Hebrews to leave the country. As soon as they had started he 
repented, and pursued them with his army; but they had already 
crossed the Red Sea, and the waters rose as he attempted to 
follow, and many of his soldiers and horses were drowned. 

These were afterwards considered great events in the nation's 
history, and the plagues which visited Pharaoh, and the rising 
of the Red Sea to destroy his hosts, were always spoken of as 
special acts of God to set his people free. The story is told in 
the book of Exodus, which is so named because it describes the 
escape of the Israelites from Egypt; but many poems were 
written about these events, which are found in different parts 
of the Bible. Probably the oldest accounts were all in poetry. ^ 
All this happened probably about B.C. 1300 ; but the accounts 
were written long afterwards, when the events were no longer 
very distinctly remembered, and so became much exaggerated, 
no^doubt. 

After escaping from Egypt, the Jews w^andered about in 
Arabia forty or fifty years, not being civilized or united enough 
to establish themselves anywhere as a nation. Many stories 
were told afterwards about their sufferings on these marches. 

1 Ex. XV. 1-21. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 29 

Once they were almost perishing from thirst in a desert, and 
were murmuring against Moses, and asking him, '' Why hast 
thou brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children 
and our cattle with thirst? " when Moses brought them to a 
spring gushing out of a solid rock; a sight which astonished 
them so much that they thought Moses had brought the water 
by striking the rock. Once when they were nearly starved, great 
flocks of quails flew by and lighted on the ground about them, 
as if on purpose to be caught. Another time, they found scat- 
tered over the ground a very sweet white gum which flows from 
the bark of trees, but which seemed to them to have dropped 
from the sky. They called it manna. All these things were 
looked upon afterwards as proofs of God's special care of them; 
for the Jews had a fine way of believing that every good thing 
which happened to them came directly from God and showed 
his love. 

REFERENCES. 

Kuenen's "Religion of Israel " (i. chap, ii., v.); Ewald's "Hist, of 
Israel" (ii. 386-423; ii. 1-228); "Bible for Young People" (ii. 1-124); 
(B. L. i. 242-336); Knappert's "Religion of Israel" (chap, vi.); Stanley's 
" History of the Jewish Church " (i. 84-226) ; Heilprin's "Poetry of Anc. 
Hebrews " (i. 46-123) ; Higgmson's " Spirit of the Bible " (i. 186-210) ; Bar- 
tram's "Stories from Genesis;" Chadwick's "Bible of To-day;" Mar- 
tineau's "Eastern Life;" Frothingham's "Patriarchs" (pp. 141, 164); 
Schiller's "Works" (vol. ix.l); Brugsch-Bey's "True Story of Exodus ; " 
Lanoye's "Rameses the Great;" Photograph of M. Angelo's "Moses;" 
Schnorr's "Pictures" (38 to 52). London Times, Aug. 4, 1881, and Har- 
per's Monthly, June, 1882 (recent discoveries in Egypt.) 

1 Essay on Moses. 



LESSON X. 

TEACHINGS OF MOSES. 

1. How did Moses divide the people? 

2. Can yoii repeat any of the laws which he gave them? 

3. Where is Mt. Sinai? 

4. How did he change their religious customs? 

5. What did he teach them about the Sabbath? 

6. What was the Ark? 

7. Where were the Jews when Moses died? 

8. What do you think of Moses' character? 

9. What books and laws were afterwards called by Moses' 
name? 

Texts: Ex. xx. 1-17; xiii. 21; xvi. 14, 15; Deut. iii. 27; xxxiv. 10. 

NOTES. 

When the Jews came from Egypt they had no government or 
laws, and no regular worship. One of the first things which 
Moses seems to have done was to divide them into great fami- 
lies or tribes, each with leaders of its own. These were named 
after some of their ancestors, and were afterwards called the 
Twelve Tribes of Israel. The laws which Moses made were so 
excellent, and taught the people to lead such good lives, that 
the Jews supposed he had received them directly from Jehovah 
on Mt. Sinai, a mountain which all the people in that region 
considered a holy place. It would seem to us very strange to 
think of God as coming down to the earth and talking with a 
man ; but in those days people imagined that such things hap- 
pened often. At any rate, there is a fine poetic passage in 
Exodus which describes the Lord coming down in lightning 
and thunder and smoke, to meet Moses on the top of Mt. 
Sinai, while the whole people stood around. A few of these 
laws which Moses gave have been preserved very nearly as he 
spoke them. They are called the Ten Commandments, and 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 31 

are still very good lessons for children to learn, and for grown- 
up people to remember. 

Moses taught them many new religious customs also. In 
Egypt, it seems, the Jews had many different gods,^ and even 
worshipped animals, as they had seen the Egyptians do.^ Yery 
likely each family or tribe had idols of its own. But Moses 
taught them about Jehovah, a much greater and more powerful 
God than any whom they worshipped, and one who would help 
them if they obeyed him, to conquer all their enemies and 
become a strong and united nation. They had never heard the 
name before,^ but from that time, as Moses proved so wise and 
good a leader, and they were saved from so many dangers, their 
faith in Jehovah grew stronger and stronger, until in time he 
became the only God whom they worshipped. In the end they 
learned to believe in him as the only God of all nations. 

It was about this time that the Jews began to observe the 
Sabbath, and Moses was perhaps the first one to teach them to 
do so. At any rate he gave this as one of his ten command- 
ments. In later times, when these events came to be written 
down, there were different accounts of the origin of the Sab- 
bath ; some supposing that it was established to celebrate the 
escape from Egypt, "* others having the strange idea that God, 
after creating the world in six days, had rested from his fatigue 
on the seventh day, and so made it holy.^ 

Moses also introduced what was called the ark; a sort of 
sacred chest, similar to one which was used in Egyptian wor- 
ship, and serving the Jews through all their wanderings as an 
object of religious worship. In those days God was not thought 
of as present everywhere, but was supposed to come wherever 
temples or altars were built for him. Before the Jews built 
their temple, they believed Jehovah somehow dwelt in the ark, 
and so carried it with them wherever they went. In their 
marches, and sometimes when they went into battle, it was 
borne at their head ; whenever they stopped it was placed under 
a tent or tabernacle, and kept very holy. It was not for many 
years that they learned that God is in all places alike. 

1 Josh. xxiv. 14; Ezek. xx. 7, 8. 2 Ex. xxxii. 4. 

3 Ex. iii. 13; vi. 3, 4 Deut. v. 15. 5 Ex. xx. 11. 



82 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

So the Jews wandered about, year after year. At first Moses 
led them southward towards Mt. Sinai, where he had lived 
while in exile; then, as this was a rocky sterile region, they 
went northward towards the more fertile lands of Canaan, but 
were driven back as they tried to settle there; finally they 
crossed the mountains to the east, and then marched north as 
far as the Dead Sea and the river Jordan. Here they con- 
quered the country and took possession of it, killing the inhab- 
itants, old and young, and burning their cities, after the cruel 
customs of that day.^ Two of the tribes remained here always. 
The others Moses was very anxious to lead across the Jordan 
into Canaan; remembering, no doubt, some of the old traditions 
which told of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in Canaan. But 
Moses died just as they reached the Jordan, and had to leave 
that part of his work to be done by others. 

The five Hebrew books which tell of the Patriarchs and of 
Moses are sometimes called the Books of Moses, sometimes by 
the Greek name Pentateuch. ^ 

REFERENCES. 

(Same as for last lesson.) 

Also, Stanley's ** Sinai and Palestine;" Toy's "Religion of Israel" 
(Lesson iv.); Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians;" Lenormant and Cheval- 
lier's "Manual of Ancient History of the East " (i. B. 3); Bunsen's "Bibel- 
werk" (i., v.); Bunsen's "Egypt's Place in Universal History" (v.); 3 
Hymns — Scott's "When Israel of the Lord beloved" (Ivanhoe); Mrs. 
Alexander's "On Nebo's Lonely Mountain." 

1 Num. xxxi. 10; Deut. ii. 34. 2 ^ volume of five books. 

3 Funereal Ritual ; showing Egyptian moral doctrines. 



LESSON XI. 

JOSHUA AXD THE JUDGES. 

1. Who was Joshua, and what book tells about him? 

2. Into what country did he lead the Israelites? 

3. What cities were captured, and where are they? 

4. How were the inhabitants treated? 

5. Do you think this treatment right? 

6. Did the Jews think it right? 

7. Who was Deborah? 

8. Who was Jephthah? 

9. Who was Samson? 

10. What were these called, and why were they called so? 

11. Did the Israelites become a nation under the Judges? 

12. What can you tell about their religion at this time? 

Texts: Josh. x. 12; xxiv. 15; Judg. v. 4, 20; xiv. 14; xv. 16. 

NOTES. 

After Moses died, other leaders appeared, many of them brave 
soldiers, but none able like him to make laws for the people, or 
give them religious teaching. First came Joshua. There is a 
book called the Book of Joshua,^ not because Joshua wrote it, 
but because it tells us all that we know about him. He was a 
good fighter, and led a large army of the Israelites across one 
of the fords of the Jordan, captured two of the first cities they 
came to,^ and put all the men, women, and children to death. 
This seems to us very barbarous, as it really was. But there 
were strange religious ideas in those days, as you have seen, 
and among them one of the strangest was, that whenever a city 
was taken in war by the help of any god, all the people and 
animals in the city must be killed as a sacrifice to that god. 
It is hard to believe tha,t people could ever have been sincere in 

1 Just as the first five are called Books of Moses. 2 Jericho and Ai. 

3 



34 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

such ideas of God; bnt they really were. Joshua lived long 
enough to take part in many such victories as this over the 
Canaanites. Towns were burned, inhabitants were massacred 
or made slaves, kings were dreadfully tortured, cattle were 
maimed or killed, and the new-comers made themselves terribly 
feared in the south part of Canaan. Afterwards, when they 
had lived there many centuries, and these conquests came to be 
written about, they all seemed very wonderful, and were de- 
scribed in the most poetic language. Some of these stories are 
still found in the Book of Joshua; other collections of them 
were lost. A poem from one of these lost books, called the 
Book of Jasher, is quoted in Joshua, ^ and tells how "the 
sun stood still, and the moon stayed,'' while Jehovah helped 
the Israelites to conquer their enemies. Very likely all these 
tales about the sun and moon, about Jericho, and about the 
crossing of the Jordan, were at first songs sung to Hebrew 
children. 

After Joshua's death, the tribes wandered through Canaan, 
some in one direction, some in another, conquering the inhabit- 
ants and seizing their land where they could, but often conquered 
themselves and made slaves again, as they had been in Egypt. 
At one time the Midianites from the eastern deserts, at another 
the Philistines from the Mediterranean coast, defeated them in 
battle, and for many years treated them as cruelly as they treated 
the Canaanites. In some places they made friends with the in- 
habitants, settled down among them as one people, married their 
daughters, and worshipped their gods.^ 

So two or three hundred years went by. All that we know of 
this long period is through the tales told about some of their 
leaders who had been brave enough to make their names remem- 
bered, or had done some remarkable things, of which songs were 
sung. In later times these leaders, though many were mere 
soldiers, were all called ^'judges; " probably because those who 
led the army in war continued to rule the people in peace, and 
did whatever governing or judging there was. One of these was 
a woman named Deborah : a sort of Joan of Arc, who lived when 

1 X. 12, 13. 2 Judges ii. 11-13; iii. 5, 6. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 36 

the people were held in slavery by a strong Canaanite king, and 
aroused them by her courage and eloquence, so that they gained 
a great victory over their conqueror. The song which she sung 
after this battle is very curious, and is one of the oldest passages 
in the Bible. ^ It describes the battle in a very spirited way, 
praises the tribes that took part in it, and heaps bitter reproaches 
on those who were afraid and held back. The last verses, which 
you will often hear spoken of, sing the praises of a cruel woman 
called Jael, who enticed the Canaanite captain, Sisera, into her 
tent and killed him by driving a nail through his temples. It is 
hard for us to understand that a treacherous deed like this, 
done by a woman too, could ever have been thought honorable 
or right; but we see that it was, and a great many pictures have 
been painted of Jael killing Sisera, as if the subject were a very 
fine one. 

Another judge, whose name you will often hear, was Jephthah, 
of whom a touching story is told. Once, as he was going into 
battle, he promised, if Jehovah gave him the victory, to sacri- 
fice whatever came out of his house to meet him when he came 
home. He won the victory, but as he returned to his house, as 
the story tells us, '' behold his daughter came out to meet him 
with timbrels and with dances; and she was his only child." It 
was a terrible trial, but a promise to Jehovah was too sacred to 
be broken, and the daughter herself begged him to keep it, so 
that she was sacrificed. It was only in these rude and violent 
days that human sacrifices were permitted among the Israelites ; 
afterwards they were given up entirely. 

Still another judge was Samson; a man of whom nothing 
great or good isafcold, and who was celebrated only for his enor- 
mous strength. Strange feats were attributed to him in the 
stories of those days, with many exaggerations no doubt; such 
as carrying off the gates of a city on his shoulders, tearing a lion 
to pieces with his hands, tying foxes together by their tails with 
a firebrand between them, pulling a great stone temple down on 
the heads of his foes, and killing himself and them together. 
He was a sort of Hercules, and made the Philistines, who were 

1 Judges v.; Allen's "Hebrew Men and Times " (p. 84). 



36 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

then the worst enemies of the Israelites, very much afraid of 
him. 

All this time there was no union among the Israelites, as each 
tribe or family looked after itself, some joining forces with others 
now and then. The Judges were chieftains of single tribes, and 
there was no one ruler over the whole people, and no one form of 
religion. Some worshipped Jehovah, others the gods of Canaan,^ 
and all, as we have seen, practised very barbarous religious rites. 
At this time, two hundred years after leaving Egypt, it looked 
very much as if they all would be scattered among the Canaan - 
ites, with no government or religion of their own, never to be 
heard of as a separate nation at all. 

REFERENCES. 

(Same as before.) 

Also, Heilprin (i. 124-172); Toy's "Religion of Israel" (Lesson v.); Mil- 
ton's "Samson Agonistes; " Schnorr, 69, 70, 74, 78, 79, 80, 82; Tennyson's 
"Dream of Fair Women;" Byron's "Hebrew Melodies." 

1 Josh. xxiv. 23; Judges ii. 12; ill. 6; viii. 33; x. 6. 



LESSON XII. 

SAMUEL. 

1. Where was Shiloh, and what was there? 

2. Who was Samuel? 

3. How were his early years spent? 

4. How did he unite the Iraelites? 

5. What did they ask of him? 

6. Why did he oppose this? 

7. Who was the first king of Israel? 

8. How did Samuel and he agree? 

9. Describe Saul's death. 

10. What do you think of Samuel's character? 

Texts: 1 Sam. ii. 2, 7, 18; iv. 22; x. 24; xv. 22 ; xvi. 7; Judges ix. 8; 
2 Sam. I. 19. 

NOTES. 

At last another great leader appeared, and brought many of 
the scattered tribes together under one government. His name was 
Samuel. When quite a young child his mother had placed him 
at Shiloh to help the priests, or '* lent him to the Lord,'' as she 
expressed it. Shiloh was a little place in the centre of Canaan, 
where the ark had been first brought on entering Canaan, and 
where all the Israelites who worshipped Jehovah got into the 
way of coming together once a j^ear. So a sort of national wor- 
ship began, with regular priests, who appear now for the first 
time. Samuel grew up at Shiloh under the priest Eli, where he 
saw many evil practices, which grieved him very much, and at 
last had a dream, in which he heard Jehovah calling him by 
name, and saying that the priests should be punished for their 
wickedness. Soon after this a great calamity happened, which 
every one thought a fulfilment of this dream. The Philistines 
defeated the Israelites in a great battle, and not only killed the 
priests, but also captured the sacred ark, which had been carried 
into battle to make sure of victory. 



38 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

Then all eyes turued to Samuel, wliom the people had already 
begun to revere for his wisdom and goodness, as well as for his 
strange dreams, which, in those superstitious days, were con- 
sidered very sacred. Men who had these visions were supposed 
to be special favorites of God, and were called seers, and after- 
wards prophets. So Samuel became a ruler of the people, and 
went to three little towns in turn each year to judge those who 
came to him. He was anxious too, as Moses had been before, 
to unite all the tribes more closely together, and he knew the 
only way to do this was to persuade them to give up the vile 
religious customs into which they had fallen, and all worship 
one God.i 

But no sooner had he succeeded in bringing a few of the tribes 
together in this way, than they began to beg him, as he was 
growing old himself, to give them a king, so that they might 
be like the other nations about them. Once before they had 
made the same request, but had been put off then with a little 
fable about the trees which wanted a king, and could get nothing 
but the dry and prickly bramble bush to consent to rule them. 2 
This time they were more serious about it, and Samuel grew 
very angry with them. The people of Israel had never had a 
king, and Samuel thought that a nation which had Jehovah 
for its God needed no other ruler than Jehovah himself. Still 
the people shouted, " Nay, but we will have a king over us," 
and Samuel was forced to give them one much against his will. 
According to one account this first king was chosen by lot; ^ but 
according to another, the Lord brought him to Samuel to enquire 
for some asses which were lost, and Samuel anointed him at 
once> At any rate the man chosen was Saul, one of the tribe 
of Benjamin, *' a choice young man and a goodly; from his 
shoulders and upw^ard higher than any of the people." Perhaps 
heiiad already distinguished himself by his courage or strength 
in war. *' And Samuel said to all the people, See ye him w^hom 
the Lord hath chosen? And all the people shouted, God save 
the king." 

1 1 Sam. vii. 3, 4. 

2 Judges ix. 7-15. Stanley's ''Jewish Church," i. 386. 

3 1 Sam. X. 17-24. ' 4 1 gam. ix. 15 — x. L 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 39 

But in whatever way Saul was chosen, Samuel never became 
reconciled, and often opposed him bitterly. Once, when Saul had 
taken a city, and killed all the men, women, and children in it, 
but spared the king, Agag, through kindness of heart, Samuel 
rebuked him severely, not for slaughtering the people, but for 
saving the king. He even went so far as to kill the king him- 
self, and cut him in pieces as a sacrifice to Jehovah, on the 
ground that the Lord required all the lives in a captured city to 
be offered to him. In this Saul seems to us, of course, much 
nobler than Samuel; but, according to the strange religious ideas 
of that time, Samuel w'as right. Saul never proved a great ruler 
or a great man, but he won many victories for his people, and 
finally killed himself in battle, when defeated by the Philistines. 
The books that tell of these events are called the Books of Samuel ; 
and in them we see how the wandering Israelite tribes at last 
became a nation. 

REFERENCES. 

{Same as before.) 

Also Newman's "History of Hebrew Monarchy;" Maurice's "Prophets 
and Kings; " Heilprin (i. 173-200); Engraving of Allston's "Saul and the 
Witch of Endor;" Schnorr (86-98); Browning's "Saul." 



LESSON XIII. 
DAVID. 

1. Who was David ? 

2. To what tribe did he belong? 

3. What anecdotes can you tell of his early life ? 

4. What strong friendship did he form ? 

5. W^hen did he become king, and how? 

6. What city did he make his capital? 

7. What did he do with the ark ? 

8. What kind of a reign did he have? 

9. Who rebelled against him ? 

10. Why is he sometimes called a psalmist ? 

11. What do you think of his cliaracter ? 

Texts: 1 Sam. xvi. 23; xvii. 40; xviii. 7; xxiv. 17; 2 Sam. i. 23, 25, 
26; xxii. 2, 12; Ps. xxiv. 7-10; li. 10. 

NOTES. 

After Saul's death his son Ishbosheth became king. But 
there was no real union yet between the tribes, so that Judah, a 
strong southern tribe, refused to accept him, and set up another 
king of its own, named David. Many romantic stories are told 
about David's early life, not agreeing very well with each other, 
but all showing that he attracted great attention while still a 
boy. One tells of his killing with a sling a big Philistine giant 
named Goliath, of whom the whole army was afraid, so that the 
king made him a captain over his troops; another tells of his 
being called in once, when the king was sick, to play the harp to 
him, and of his playing so beautifully that the '^ evil spirit (or 
sickness) departed from him, and he was well." In any case 
Saul became very fond of him, and a strong attachment sprang 
up between David and the king's son Jonathan, which has be- 
come one of the most celebrated friendships in history. There 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 41 

is nothing in the Old Testament more beautiful than the chapters 
which describe this, and the song sung by David after the death 
of Saul and Jonathan. 

Afterwards David became so much beloved by the people for 
his beauty and his courage that Saul grew very jealous and 
drove him out into the mountains. David took refuge in the 
cave of Adullam, where " every one in distress, and every one 
in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered them- 
selves unto him, and he became a captain over them." Saul 
once tried to seize him and fell into David's hands, but David 
spared his life and remained an outlaw, part of the time in the 
service of the Philistines, until Saul's death. 

As soon as Saul died and his son succeeded him, the people of 
Judah remembered David, and called him home to be their 
king. So there ^vere two kings, one in the north, and one in 
the south, and there were wars between them for seven years, 
when all the tribes came to David at Hebron, and made him king 
over the whole land. This was about 1050 B. C. 

David's first act was to seize a strong Canaanite city on a 
steep hill-top, and make it the capital of his new kingdom, 
changing its name from Jebus to Jerusalem. Then, having a 
capital, he determined to bring the ark there, that Jehovah might 
dwell in Jerusalem, and all the tribes come there to worship 
together. The ark had been lying for some years in a little 
village, where neither the Philistines, who had taken it in bat- 
tle, nor the Jews, had dared to touch it, through superstitious 
fear of it; but David formed a long procession, with singers 
and trumpeters, and brought the ark into Jerusalem with great 
pomp, leaping and dancing before it as it came into the city.* 

David was a great warrior, and conquered nearly all the na- 
tions from the Mediterranean almost to the Euphrates, making 
some of them pay him tribute, and destroying others with hor- 
rible tortures. For a time the kingdom of Israel became one of 
the mightiest in the East, and David's palace w^as thronged by 
powerful nobles with princely retinues, and was the scene, in 
times of peace, of much splendor and luxury. But all this lux- 

1 Ps. xxiv. 7-10. 



42 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

ury caused great corruption also, and the heavy taxes which the 
people had to pay made them very restless and discontented. 
Two of his own sons rebelled against him, and one of them, 
Absalom, who had gone to war against his father, was killed in 
a singular way just as he had made himself king. This was the 
greatest grief of David's life, and he mourned over Absalom 
very long and bitterly. 

So the last part of David's life was much more unhappy and 
disgraceful than the first, and David himself lost the nobleness 
and courage of his earlier days, and became timid and revengeful. 
One of his last acts was to direct that two of his subjects whom 
he had feared during his life, and had not ventured to resist, 
should be executed after his death. Another great crime, which 
he committed much earlier in life, was in taking Bathsheba to 
be his wife, and directing that her husband, who was one of his 
officers, should be put in the most dangerous place in battle, 
where he was sure to be killed. Fortunately there was one man 
at court, a prophet named Nathan, who was bold enough to tell 
the king to his face how wicked a thing he had done, so that 
David confessed his fault, and showed great penitence and grief. 
The story which Nathan told the king to convince him of his 
guilt is very interesting, and shows how the prophets, who were 
the only preachers in those days, talked and taught. 

The most interesting trait in David's character was his love of 
music. He is always spoken of in history as a '' psalmist," and 
is said to have sung and played upon the harp, besides inventing 
new musical instruments. Some of the hymns which were after- 
wards sung in the temple were thought to have been written by 
him, and afterwards, when all the Temple-hymns were collected, 
they were called, after him, the Psalms of David. Though he 
did not write them all, yet he set the example, no doubt, which 
so^many others followed. 

On the whole, though David did so many things which do not 
seem to us either wise or good, yet for those days he was really 
a very great king, who not only raised his nation from feeble- 
ness to power and fame, but also gave the people some higher 
tastes than love of luxury or of war. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 43 

REFERENCES. 

{Same as before.) 

Davidson's *' Introduction to Old Testament; " Milman's "History of the 
Jews;" Heilprin's ^'Poetry of Anc. Hebrews" (i.201-ii. 6); Herder's 
"Spirit of Hebrew Poetry;" Noyes's "Translation of the Psalms;" 
Michael Angelo's statue of David; Schnorr, 99-187. 



LESSON XIV. 
SOLOMON. 

1. Who was Solomon? 

2. What was the character of his reign? 

3. What trade or commerce did he introduce ? 

4. W'^hat buildings did he erect? 

5. W^hat can you tell about his religious faith? 

6. W^hat is meant by speaking of Solomon's wisdom? 

7. How do you think he compares with his father David ? 

8. What two kingdoms were formed after his death? 

9. About what year did he die ? 

10. How long did the union of the twelve tribes last? 

Texts: 1 Kings ii. 2; iii. ]2, 13; iv. 25, 30, 33; ix. 26, 28; x. 1, 27; xii. 
11; Song of Solomon, ii. 11, 12; Matt. vi. 28, 29. 

NOTES. 

Before David's death, Solomon, son of Bathsheba, was an- 
ointed king, to prevent any of David's other sons from seizing 
the throne. Solomon was no warrior like his father, and even 
lost some of the territory which David had conquered, but he 
understood the arts of peace very well, and the nation grew in 
wealth and prosperity under him as it had never done before. 
In later times it was always said, '' Judah and Israel dwelt 
safely, every man under his vine and fig tree, all the days of 
Solomon." 

Before that time the Jews had had very little to do with other 
nations except in war, but Solomon established trade with 
several of his neighbors, and made alliances v/ith the King of 
Egypt and other kings by marrying their daughters. He built 
ships on the Ked Sea, manning them with Phoenician sailors, as 
his own people were not seamen ; he bought cedar and fir timber 
in Tyre, spices in Arabia, horses in Egypt, gold and precious 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 45 

stones, peacocks and apes in India. In this way he gave his 
people new occupatione and greater knowledge of the world, and 
brought into the country a great deal of wealth. ** All King 
Solomon's drinking vessels, and all the vessels of the house," we 
are told, '' were of pure gold; " '' and the king made silver to be 
in Jerusalem as stones." The accounts of the rich presents he 
received, of the food that was eaten in his palace every day, and 
of the number of wives and horses and servants that he had, read 
like a fairy tale. 

A great deal of this money was spent in adorning his capital. 
The tent or tabernacle in which the ark had always stood 
seemed much too simple for so magnificent a monarch, and a 
splendid temple was built, small in size, but of the costliest 
materials, which it took seven years and a half to finish. The 
king is said to have sacrificed 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep in 
dedicating this temple. Much larger and more magnificent than 
the temple was the king's palace, beside which was another pal- 
ace for his Egyptian queen, and another still for state purposes. 
All this splendor made Solomon celebrated throughout the East; 
and a story is told of an Arabian queen who came from Sheba 
to Jerusalem, purposely to see Solomon's riches, and to ask 
him some hard questions. 

For Solomon was quite as famous for his wisdom as for his 
wealth. Kings are not apt to be very learned men, but we must 
remember that " wisdom " did not mean book-learning in days 
when there were no books, but only wise ways of doing things, 
and such knowledge as comes by observation. Some of Solo- 
mon's judgments, when his people brought their disputes to him 
to be settled, have been very noted ever since.^ Besides this 
Solomon excelled in expressing his thoughts in short and pithy 
sentences called proverbs, and this art was very mach admired 
in the East. Some of these sayings were collected many years 
afterwards, with others of the same kind written much later, and 
called The Proverbs. He seems to have been fond of plants and 
animals too, and, if he had lived many centuries later, might have 
been called a botanist or zoologist. 

1 1 Bangs iii. 16-28. 



46 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

It was a long time before the Jews ceased talking or writing 
of the splendor and luxury of Solomon's reign. One of their 
oldest poems, called the " Song of Solomon," shows something 
of the feeling towards him. It is a sort of antique drama, 
and represents a country maiden taken away from her peasant 
lover and brought into Solomon's harem, from which she af- 
terwards escapes and returns to her home, remaining true to 
her love. The writer's idea seems to be to contrast the volup- 
tuousness of Solomon's way of life with simple and true affec- 
tion. 

Beside the Temple of Jehovah, Solomon built temples to three 
other gods, Chemosh, Molech, and Ashtoreth, as well as to many 
whose names are not given. ^ Although he worshipped Jehovah 
as his nation's god, yet he evidently believed there were other 
gods too, whom it was better not to neglect; and his people 
were only too willing always fco sacrifice to the idols of their 
neighbors. We must remember that there were very few in 
those days, if any, who had thought enough on such matters to 
understand that there can be oulj one God, and Solomon was 
not one of those few. Most of the kings who came after him 
followed his example in this, and the temples which he built to 
all these strange gods stood for hundreds of years. 

Solomon was the last king over the whole Jewish people. The 
northern and southern tribes never became one at heart, and 
were on the point of falling apart more than once while David 
was king. 2 When Solomon died, and his son Rehoboam threat- 
ened to be even more despotic than his father, the breach grew 
wider, and the little nation was broken in two. Ten northern 
tribes chose a king of their own, Jeroboam, built temples con- 
taining idols of Jehovah, and formed the kingdom of Israel. 
This kingdom lasted two hundred and fifty years, had nineteen 
kings, and then was conquered, and the people carried into sla- 
very by the Assyrians. Two tribes only, those of Judah and 
Benjamin, accepted Rehoboam as their king, and took the 
name of the kingdom of Judah. They were much smaller than 
the other kingdom, but proved stronger and lasted much longer. 

1 1 Kings xi. 7, 8; 2 Kings xxiii. 13. 2 2 Sam. xv. 10-12; xix. 41-43. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 47 

It is from them that all the Jews now living are descended. 
Solomon died b. c. 978, so that the Jewish people existed as 
one nation less than a hundred years. 

REFERENCES. 

{Same as before.) 

Allen's "Hebrew Men and Times;" Gannett's "Chosen Nation" (Lesson 
iii., p. 2); Renan's Commentary (and others) on the "Song of Solomon;" 
Josephus; Antiquities (B. viii.); Heilprin (ii. 7-10). 



LESSON XV 

JOSIAH. 

1 . How long after Solomon did Josiah live ? 

2. Over what people was he king ? 

3. What changes did he make in the Jewish religion? 

4. What was the character of the Jewish religion before that 
time? 

5. What led Josiah to make these changes ? 

6. What was the Book of the Law? 

7. What Jewish books had been written before this time? 

8. By whom was Josiah conquered ? 

9. How long did his kingdom last after his death, and how 
was it destroyed at last ? 

Texts: 1 Kings xix. 12; xx. 11; Ps. xlii. 1, 2, 3, 11; Lamentations i. 1, 4. 

NOTES. 

About the year b. c. 640, a boy named Josiah, only eight 
years old, was king of Judah, the kingdom of Israel having al- 
ready perished. When Josiah became of age he found the Tem- 
ple in great need of repair, and set carpenters and masons to 
work upon it. While this work was going on, Hilkiah the high 
priest sent word to the king that a new book, which he called the 
Book of the Law, and which had strange religious precepts in it, 
had been found in the Temple. When the king read the book 
he was greatly excited and alarmed, for in it were laws from 
Jehovah forbidding all the idolatries and other religious customs 
which he and the kings before him had practised. Until then 
the, Jews had always been fond of idolatrous rites, and, although 
reforms had once or twice been attempted, ^ the people and kings 
had always fallen back at once into their old ways. In Josiah 's 
time the three temples which Solomon had built to heathen gods 

1 1 Kings XV. 9 ; 2 Kings xi. 17 ; xviii. 1-4. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 49 

were still standing; the sun, moon, and stars were all worshipped 
in Jerusalem as gods; the horses and chariot of the Sun-god 
stood in the Temple of Jehovah, together with many other 
heathen idols and altars and strange vessels used for wicked 
rites, while just outside the city was a valley where little chil- 
dren were regularly sacrificed to the dreadful god Molech.^ But 
the Book of the Law forbade any god to be worshipped but Je- 
hovah, or any idols or images to be used, and directed that sac- 
rifices should be offered only at Jerusalem, and that the priests 
should all be chosen from one family, the family of Levi. 

It was a great change, from all the horrible practices of the 
past to the worship of one God, but Josiah set about it bravely, 
and found many ready to support him ; so that the heathen tem- 
ples and altars in and around Jerusalem were soon destroyed, 
and the unholy images and vessels in Jehovah's temple brought 
out and burned. This was one of the most important events 
in Jewish history ; for from this time idolatry almost ceased 
among the Jews, and the worship of one God, or what is called 
Monotheism, began in earnest. To be sure, it was seven centu- 
ries since Moses had first taught them about Jehovah, and this 
seems a long time for a nation to be learning to give up its idols 
and its many gods ; but this only shows how full of idolatry the 
whole world then was. 

What this Book of the Law was, or how it came to be in the 
Temple, we cannot be sure. Perhaps it was not really found in 
the Temple, but was written by the high priest himself, or by 
some other person, to bring about a religious reform, and the 
priest either did not know this or said nothing about it. Proba- 
bly it was part of what is now called Deuteronomy, which in 
that case is one of the oldest books in the Old Testament.^ Be- 
fore this time several of the prophecies and some of the psalms 
were written, and no doubt many stories about the Patriarchs 
and Moses; but there were no books containing laws, else the 
king would not have been so much surprised when the Book of 
the Law was read. Before this the Jews had nothing which 
could be called a Bible. 



1 2 Kings xxiii. 4-14. 2 Kuenen's ^'Religion of Israel," ii. 9-38. 

4 



50 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

But the nation did not last long after this to practise its new- 
religion; for in the thirteenth year of Josiah's reign he was de- 
feated in battle by Pharaoh, and the nation became subject to 
Egypt once more. This w^as really the end of the Jewish mon- 
archy; for although there were four more kings, they were all 
vassals of foreign nations, and the kingdom grew weaker all 
the time. After the Egyptians came the Chaldaeans, a strong 
eastern nation, who conquered both Egypt and Judsea. The 
Chaldaean king, Nebuchadnezzar, took Jerusalem a few years 
after Josiah's death, and about twenty years later the city and 
Temple were entirely destroyed, and most of the inhabitants 
carried captive to Babylon on the river Euphrates. This was in 
the year B. C. 586. 

REFERENCES. 

{Same as before.) 

Smith's "Assyrian Discoveries; " Toy's " Religion of Israel " (Lesson xiii.) ; 
Smith's " History of Babylon;" Laj^ard's "Nineveh and Babylon; '^ Lenor- 
mantand Chevallier's Manual; Schnorr, 123, 124; Byron's "Hebrew Melo- 
dies." 



LESSON XVI. 

JEREMIAH. 

1. Who was Jeremiah ? 

2'. What do you understand by a Hebrew prophet? 

3! Mention any Hebrew prophets whose names you remember. 

4. Did they all write books ? 

5. Tell as much as you can of the life of Jeremiah. 

6. Tell something of his way of preaching. 

7. What made him so mournful a preacher ? 

S, How long did he say the exile of his people would last? 

9. How long did it last ? , ,, 

10. What is the difference between the word ** prophesy as 
used then and as used now ? 

Texts: Jer. vi. 14; viii. 20, 22; xiii. 23; xxxi. 15; Lam. i. 1, 6 ; Ps. xlii. 
1, 5 ; cxxi. 1. 

NOTES. 

One of the leading men at Jerusalem in these trying times 
was Jeremiah the prophet. It is not easy for us to understand 
exactly what a Hebrew prophet was; but we must remember 
that in those early days any one who seemed wiser or more elo- 
quent than others was sure to be looked upon with great respect 
as if he had a special gift from God. At first they were called 
"men of God," or - seers," ' and were looked upon as magi- 
cians, who consulted charms and conversed with spirits; after- 
wards they were called prophets, and for a long time were the 
^reat orators and poets of the nation, and had as much mfluence 
as kings or priests. They were the only preachers the Jews then 
had, and were the first ones to write books or collect accountsof 
early Jewish history. A few of them wrote their own prophecies 
in prose or poetry, and these writings are almost the oldest parts 

1 1 Sam. ix. 8, 9. 



52 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

of the Old Testament, and certainly the most eloquent and beau- 
tiful. They were not all good or wise men, for some made great 
mistakes or deceived the people on purpose, but many were 
among the bravest and noblest of the Jews both in peace and in 
war. Among the early prophets were Samuel, Deborah, Nathan, 
Elijah; among the later, Joel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and 
several others. Perhaps the greatest of them all was Isaiah, who 
saved the nation, in a time of great peril, by his courage and 
his influence w^ith the people and the king.i 

Jeremiah lived in the last days of the nation, and tried, when 
it was quite too late, to save it from destruction. After Josiah's 
reform, when all the heathen idols had been removed, it was 
supposed that the country was safe, but Jeremiah saw how cor- 
rupt it still was, and kept on predicting calamity unless the 
people themselves reformed. He felt so deeply the nation's 
wickedness and peril that he could talk of nothing else, so that his 
writings were full of lamentation, and he was as little beloved 
by the people as men usually are who are constantly talking to 
us of our faults. Sometimes he stood at the temple-gate and 
told those who entered that their sacrifices and woi'ship did 
no good, unless they gave up stealing and cheating, and were 
kind and just to strangers and widows. ^ Some of his ways of 
attracting the people's attention, and forcing his meaning upon 
them, were very singular. In these days writers often use what 
are called figures of speech, but in those days, when people read 
but little, the same figures or illustrations were acted out. Once, 
for instance, when Jeremiah wished to convince the Jews that 
Jerusalem must be destroyed, he took a bowl in his hands and 
threw it violently on the ground, to show that the Lord would 
shatter the city as he had shattered the bowl. Again, he walked 
through the streets with a yoke on his neck, to show the people 
that-they themselves were to bear the yoke of slavery. At an- 
other time, he placed two baskets of figs in front of the Temple, 
one full of ripe figs, the other full of rotten ones, explaining 
that the good figs represented the obedient Jews, the bad ones 
those who refused to go into exile with their brethren. ^ 

1 2 Kings xix. 2 Jer. vii. 3 jgr. xix. ; xxiv. ; xxvii. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 53 

Some of his threats or predictions proved quite wrong, as when 
he said King Jehoiakim would have no successor, while he really 
had two; ^ or that all the Jews would finally return to Jerusalem, 
although but a small portion returned; ^ or that their exile 
would last seventy years, when it was really hardly more than 
fifty.3 But his preaching was none the less eloquent or useful 
because he could not always tell beforehand exactly what was to 
happen ; for prophecy in those days meant much more than pre- 
dicting future events. 

Jeremiah had made the king and people so angry by his 
constant threats and wailings, that he was finally thrown into a 
dungeon as a traitor. When Jerusalem was captured and de- 
stroyed, the conqueror showed him great kindness for having 
urged the people to submit, and offered to care for him in Baby- 
lon ; but he preferred to stay behind and share the misfortunes 
of those who remained in Jerusalem. Afterwards he fled to 
Egypt with a party of Jewish exiles, and there he is supposed 
to have died. 

Beside the book of Jeremiah, are five very mournful poems 
called ** Lamentations,'* which he is thought to have written, 
four of which are something like our acrostics, the verses begin- 
ning with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in regular succession. 

REFEREN-CES. 

(Same as before.) 

Also, Kuenen's *' Prophets and Prophecy m Israel ; " N'oyes's *' Prophets ; " 
Heilprin, ii. 62-163; Stanlej", ii. 570, &c.; Tholuck's '' Die Propheten und 
ihre Weissagungen ; " "Bible for Young" (iv. chap, ii.); Milman, i. 439- 
448; Gannett's "Chosen Nation" (Lesson iii. p. 3); Matthew Arnold's 
" Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration ; " (Arrangement of Isa. xl.-lxvi. 
for schools); Michael Angelo's "Prophets," from Sistine Chapel. 

1 Jer. xxxvi. 30. 2 Jer. xxxiii. 7. 3 jer. xxv. 11. 



LESSON XVIL 

EZRA. 

1. To what city were most of the captives carried? 

2. What happened to that city afterwards ? 

3. Why was Cyrus called the Messiah? 

4. What favor did he grant the Israelites? 

5. What were they called after this? 

6. What was done after their return to Jerusalem ? 

7. Who was Ezra? Who was Nehemiah ? 

8. Tell something about them. 

9. In what books do we read about them? 

10. What did Ezra do for the Jewish nation? 

11. W^ho were the Samaritans? 

Texts: Ps. cxxvi. 1; cxxvii. 1; cxxxvii. 1, 2, 3, 4; Isa, xl. 1, 2, 3; Ixi. 
1 ; Haggai, ii. 3 ; Dan. v. 25. 

NOTES. 

So Jerusalem was destroyed, and most of the inhabitants were 
scattered. Some fled to Egypt, but a larger number were carried 
to Babylon as captives. Babylon was a very beautiful city, 
celebrated throughout the world for its immense walls, broad 
enough for two chariots to drive upon them side by side, its 
magnificent temple of Bel, its artificial lakes, and its hanging 
gardens. The Israelites at first hated their conquerors, and 
would have nothing to do with them ; but as they were well 
treated and allowed to follow their own customs and their own 
faith, many of them soon grew very fond of their splendid home, 
and prepared to live there all their lives. They even fell into 
their conquerors' ways of life and worship, and received many 
new ideas from them which afterwards appeared in the Jewish 
religion. Besides the tales of the early times already spoken of, 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 65 

there are many stories in the Bible which the Israelites must 
have learned when in Babylon. ^ 

After they had been about fifty years in exile, a new people 
called the Persians came into power, and, under their great king 
Cyrus, subdued all the Eastern nations. The inhabitants of 
Babylon felt very safe with their strong walls around them ; but 
one night, when their king Belshazzar, with many of his lords, 
was sitting at a luxurious feast, not thinking of danger, Cyrus 
turned the water of the river Euphrates into a new bed which 
he had dug for it, and entered the city through the dry channel, 
capturing them all without resistance. The Israelites were very 
much excited by this, and looked upon it as a punishment to 
the Chaldaeans for destroying Jerusalem. Immediately their 
prophets began to predict a return from captivity, and promised 
the people all kinds of splendor and prosperity in Jerusalem 
again. They thought Cyrus had been sent by Jehovah expressly 
to set them free, and called him the Lord's anointed or Mes- 
siah, ^ a title which they gave to all their kings. They had been 
looking long for a new king or Messiah, and were ready to believe 
that the Persian Cyrus was appointed to deliver them, and that 
all their sorrows were over. 

These bright hopes were not quite fulfilled, for Cyrus did not 
become their Messiah; but he was really kind to them, and al- 
lowed as many as chose to return to Jerusalem, under a governor 
whom he appointed, and taking with them whatever was still left 
of the spoils of Solomon's Temple. Most of the Israelites by that 
time had become so much attached to Babylon that they did not 
wish to return, but some longed to see Jerusalem again, and have 
a temple of their own, and so set out at once. They formed 
a large caravan of about 40,000 people, and ♦travelled through 
the desert for four months, before reaching their old home. 
Many of their most beautiful songs and hymns were written to 
celebrate this return, and express their great joy on seeing Jeru- 
salem once more. 2 As most of those who returned belonged to 



1 Goldziher's Mythology among the Hebrews, 316-336; Stanley's " Jewish 
Church," iii. Lee. xli. 

2 Isa. xlv. 3 Stanley's Jewish Church, iii. 86. 



56 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

the tribe of Judah, they were all called Jews (Jud^ans), and 

this has continued to be their name ever since. 

In Jerusalem, of course, they found everything in ruins, and 
their first task was to rebuild the Temple. It seemed a great 
undertaking for poor exiles, with enemies about them; but their 
prophets (Haggai, Zachariah, and others) urged them on, and in 
four years the Temple was finished, though in a far less costly 
and splendid style than before. The descendants of the Jews 
who had remained in Palestine (afterwards called Samaritans) 
offered to help them, but were not allowed to do so, and so built 
a temple of their own on Mt. Gerizim, which the Jews afterwards 
destroyed. This was the beginning of much hatred between 
the two races, for the Jews grew more and more jealous of their 
neighbors as time went on, and would never acknowledge that 
the Samaritans were the same people with themselves. 

But the returned exiles found their life at Jerusalem very hard, 
and became so neglectful of their new temple and its priests, 
that after seventy or eighty years a second party set out from 
Babylon, under a learned priest named Ezra, who was resolved 
to make his countrymen obey the laws of Jehovah. By the help 
of !N'ehemiah a cup-bearer of the king, who followed a few years 
later, the ruined walls and gates of the city were rebuilt, all 
opposition from their enemies was overcome, " for the builders 
every one had his sword girded by his side, and so builded,'^ and 
the people were able to live at last in peace and safety. 

Then Ezra began his religious reform. In the first temple the 
worship had been very much like that in other eastern temples ; 
but Ezra brought new laws and regulations with him, some of 
which had been written in Babylon, and read these from a 
wooden pulpit when the people were gathered at a feast. These 
laws were chiefly about the duties and dresses of the priest, sac- 
rifices and feasts, clean and unclean beasts, keeping the Sabbath, 
and worshipping Jehovah at certain times and places. All 
these things the people promised strictly to obey, and from this 
time the Jewish religion became very different from what it had 
ever been before. The Sabbath began to be strictly observed, 
the feast of Tabernacles and perhaps the other feasts to be cele- 
brated, and many different kinds of sacrifices to be offered, 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 57 

while the priesthood became a very large and important body. 
Soon after this, the books of the Bible were collected and regu- 
larly read to the people, synagogues were built, and the hymn- 
book called the Book of Psalms began to be used in the Temple. 
So you see that it was after the return from the captivity in 
Babylon that the Jewish church was fully established, and no one 
had more to do in founding it than Ezra. Ezra lived about B.C. 
450. The books which give the account of these events are 
called the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. 

REFEEENCES. 

(Same as be/ore,) 

Herodotus, i. 178-191 (Account of Cyrus); Toj'^'s "Religion of Israel " 
(Lesson xviii.); Institute Essays, pp. 73-103 (Account of Ezra); Byron's 
" Hebrew Melodies ; " Schnorr, 125-128. 



LESSON XVIIL 

THE MACCABEES. 

1. Who was Alexander the Great ? 

2. What had he to do with the Jews ? 

3. After his time to what countries was Judaga subject ? 

4. Who were the Maccabees ? 

5. Why did they revolt ? 

6. When and how long were they in power ? 

7. Who was Herod the Great, and what can you tell of him ? 

8. When did the Romans get possession of Jerusalem ? 

9. What great misfortune came to Jerusalem finally; and 
when ? 

Texts: Dan. xii. 3; Ps. xliv. 1; cxviii. 1, 14, 24; Ixxiv. 1, 16, 17. 

NOTES. 

After Ezra's time there is nothing to interest us much in the 
history of the Jews, for nearly 300 years. They continued sub- 
ject to Persia until Alexander the Great, King of Macedon, 
invaded Asia, conquering the whole country as far as India and 
Egypt, and carrying the Greek language and civilization wher- 
ever he went. After his early death, ^ the countries he had con- 
quered were divided among his generals, and the Jews became 
subjects of Egypt again for about a century, and then of Syria. 
Their Egyptian rulers allowed them to keep their own religion, 
but the Syrian kings tried to force Greek worship and customs 
upon them. They built gymnasiums in Jerusalem, and intro- 
duced Greek games, at which the Jews were greatly shocked. ^ 
They stole the treasures from the Temple, burnt the sacred books, 
bribed the priests, and persecuted cruelly all who refused to give 
up the worship of Jehovah. The worst of all these Syi'ian kings 

IB. C. 323. 2 2 Mace. iv. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 59 

was Antiochus Epiphanes, whom the Jews always afterwards 
mentioned with hatred and horror. He entered the sacred city 
of Jerusalem with his army, plundered the Temple, and finished 
by placing on the altar another heathen altar, and commanding 
the Jews to offer sacrifices upon it. Some of them consented, 
others resolved to die rather than submit, and resisted their con- 
querors with the utmost bravery. One story is told of a mother 
who saw seven sons killed with cruel tortures before her eyes, 
and died herself, urging them not to yield. Another is told of 
an old man of ninety who was beaten to death for refusing to 
eat swine's flesh, which his religion forbade.^ At last the whole 
people rose against their conquerors. Their leader was an aged 
priest living in a little town among the hills, who was ordered 
to offer a heathen sacrifice, but instead of doing so broke the 
altar to pieces, killed one of his countrymen who was offering 
sacrifices on it, and fled to the mountains, where he collected a 
band of brave Jews and defied the tyrant Antiochus. After the 
death of this priest, his fiive sons led the revolt, one of whom 
proved a great general, conquered all the Syrian armies, and at 
last seized Jerusalem again and restored the Temple and Jewish 
worship. His name was Judas ; but the people nicknamed him 
Makkabi, or *' the hammer," so that his family were always called 
the ' ' Makkabees " or " Maccabees. ' ' Judas was one of the noblest 
heroes in Jewish history; and the whole family were afterwards 
regarded by the Jews as their deliverers from Syrian tyranny. 
This war happened about B. C. 150, and the Maccabees were 
kings and high-priests of the nation for about a hundred years. 
Their history is given in the *' Books of the Maccabees," which 
are among the most interesting of the Jewish scriptures, although 
they were written so late that they are not usually given with the 
rest. The Book of Daniel, and several of the Psalms were writ- 
ten at the same time. 

Unfortunately the descendants of this family of Maccabees 
were not so heroic as their fathers, and by and by began quarrel- 
ling among themselves, and were driven from power by rivals 
who called in the Romans to help them. The first of these was 

1 2 Mace. vii. 



60 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

Herod, afterwards called the Great, not really a Jew but an 
Edomite, and not a very good man, but an able king, who made 
Jerusalem prosperous, and rebuilt the Temple on a much grand- 
er scale than ever before. He had a brilliant reign, and left the 
kingdom to be divided among his sons. 

All this time, however, Judaea was really subject to the Ro- 
mans, who had made all the other eastern countries provinces of 
Rome, and only allowed Herod to keep the name of king till it 
was time to make his kingdom a province also. At last the time 
came: and Titus, son of one of the emperors, was sent out to 
capture Jerusalem. The Jews fought as bravely as they had 
done under the Maccabees, but the city was besieged and taken, 
the Temple was burned ; and the inhabitants were scattered over 
the earth, never to become a nation again. Titus marched into 
Rome in triumph, bringing the spoils of the city and Temple 
with him, and the Jewish nation ceased to exist. This was in 
the year 70 of a new era of the world's history. 

REFERENCES. 

Kuenen's "Religion of Israel," iii. ; Stanley's "Hist, of Jewish Church '^ 
(3d Series) ; " Hebrew Men and Times; " Gannett' s " Chosen People " (Les- 
son iii. P. iv. E. ); Conder's "Judas Maccabseus " (New Plutarch Series); 
Helon's "Pilgrimage; " Byron's "Hebrew Melodies; " Photographs of Arch 
of Titus, and of Raphael's " Heliodorus ; " Schnorr, 150-157. 



LESSON XIX.i 

THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

1. When were the first Jewish books written? 

2. Who were the earliest writers? 

3. What narratives or histories were there before the time 
of the Prophets? 

4. When did the first collection of religious laws or pre- 
cepts appear? 

5. Tell what books or writings there were before the Cap- 
tivity. 

6. What was written after the Captivity? 

7. What had Ezra to do with the Jewish Bible? 

8. When did the reading of the Bible in the synagogues 
begin? 

9. What was meant by the Law? the Prophets? the Other 
Writings? 

10. Were these three collections or one? 

11. Is the Old Testament one book or many books ? 

NOTES. 

During so many centuries the Jews must of course have 
written many books. Every nation has what is called a " litera- 
ture/' and the Jews w^ere very rich in this way. Many of their 
writings were lost, but others are among the oldest and most 
interesting that are known. 

For a long time they had no writings at all, because no one 
could either read or write. Even after their escape from 
Egypt, though by that time there were rude forms of writing, 
on wood or stone, yet so long as the people were wandering 
about and fighting constantly, no records could very well be 

1 Teachers may postpone this lesson to the end, if they prefer, and take 
it up in connection with that on the New Testament. 



62 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

made or saved. Many stories were handed down from father 
to son, and many songs were sung about their strange experi- 
ences, ^ and some laws were certainly put in force before the 
settlement in Canaan, ^ but very little got written down, or could 
have been read if it had been. 

At last, about eight hundred years before Christ, after the 
nation had become somewhat civilized, and there had been 
kings for two or three centuries, the first Jewish writers ap- 
peared, and something like real books began to be written. 
These books were different enough from ours, as your teachers 
will explain to you, and were all destroyed long, long ago; but 
many copies were made from them, and other copies from them, 
so that we know pretty well what was in them. These first 
writers were the prophets, whom you have already heard of as 
preachers, rebuking kings and people when they did wrong, but 
who were writers as well. Many of them were the best scholars 
of the time, and not only knew more than others, but were able 
when they had anything to say to say it in a very eloquent and 
poetic form. The oldest books that have been saved are prob- 
ably those containing the writings of Joel, Hosea, Amos, and 
one or two other prophets. 

But the prophets did more than write books of their own. 
They were the earliest Jewish historians, so far as we know. 
The Jews had always a great many traditions about their an- 
cestors, beginning as far back as Moses or even Abraham. 
Some of these stories had to do with certain places, like Bethel 
or Sichem or Jericho ; some with certain tribes, such as Judah 
or Benjamin; some were mere scraps of poetry or song, to be 
sung in the tents or on the march ; some were older even than 
the Jews themselves , and gave curious accounts of the creation 
of the world, the first people that lived in it, and the floods that 
destroyed them. These had been floating about among the 
various tribes for many, many years, before any one had thought 
them important enough to be put into writing or saved. At last 
the prophets, or the scholars who studied with them, discovered 
the value of these ancient tales (just as we are beginning now 

1 Judges V. 2 Ex. XX. 1-17. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 63 

to find out the value of the early accounts of the American 
colonies), and determined to collect and preserve them, before 
they were quite lost. Two or three different collections were 
made in this way, which remained separate for a long time, but 
after the return from the captivity were put together into one 
history.^ 

It was also about the eighth century that the proverbs of 
Solomon and of other distinguished men were first collected 
together, 2 and the earliest hymns and songs arranged. You 
remember that King David, who lived long before this, had 
been very fond of music and poetry, and probably wrote some 
hymns himself. [N'one of the later kings, except perhaps Solo- 
mon,^ had the same tastes; but David's influence was not lost, 
and when in later years the Jewish psalms were collected, his 
name was given to the book, and many psalms were attributed 
to him. Some very old poems too, which were not at all sacred, 
were preserved with the rest, as you will remember from the 
account of the Song of Solomon,^ and these are quite as inter- 
esting in their way as the others. Beside these, some other 
writings were found by the prophets and preserved, which show 
that people were asking the same religious questions then as 
now, and answering them in very much the same way. Such 
was the Book of Job, in which some unknown writer shows very 
beautifully that God brings suffering on good and bad alike, 
and that the wisest and most powerful can do no better than 
submit to God's higher will. Now-a-days such subjects would 
be treated in prose ; but then almost everything was in poetry, 
the Book of Job among the rest. 

But all this time there was no Bible, so far as we know; that 
is, no book containing religious precepts or rules for worship. 
The Jews, as we have seen, served all kinds of gods, in all 
sorts of idolatrous ways, and although many attempts were made 
to put an end to this, the evils still continued. ^ The first 
writing that could be called a Bible was Josiah's Book of the 

1 The so-called Jehovistic and Elohistic documents of the Pentateuch 
were specimens of these original records. 

2 Prov. x.-xxii.; xxv.-xxix. ^ i Kings iv. 32, 33. ^ Lesson xiv. 
5 1 Kings XV. 3, 3:t; 2 Kings viii. 18, 27; xvi. 3; xxi. 3-7, 20-22. 



64 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

Law, about B. C. 600, which the priest, as you remember,! said 
he had found in the Temple. Whether he really found it or 
not, or whether it was first written at that time or not, it cer- 
tainly had not been known before, and was the only sacred 
book which the Jews had before the Captivity. ^ This was 
probably what is now called Deuteronomy. 

How all these writings which I have mentioned were pre- 
served during the exile in Babylon, we cannot tell; but fortu- 
nately they were not wholly lost or destroyed, and soon after 
the return to Jerusalem many others were added to them. 
Some had been written no doubt in Babylon, others appeared 
as soon as the Temple was rebuilt, and new orders of priests 
were established, who needed laws for sacrifices and feasts and 
Sabbath worship. So much was done by Ezra in the way of 
collecting all the old writings and adding fresh ones, that the 
story sprang up that he had rewritten the entire Old Testament 
from memory. No doubt he brought together all that then 
existed, and perhaps combined the scattered records into such 
single books as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and the 
books of Samuel and Kings, all of which appeared about this 
time. As soon as synagogues were built, these writings were 
read regularly to the people from Sabbath to Sabbath. Very 
soon, as singing or chanting became an important part of the 
Temple service, all the old hymns were collected for temple use, 
and many new ones added, until the Book of Psalms was 
finally made, as we find it now. Sometimes we find the same 
song or hymn, slightly changed in form, in two or three differ- 
ent places. 3 Still later, an account of the return from captivity 
under Ezra and Nehemiah was written. Also a curious repeti- 
tion of the history of the Jewish Monarchy ; as though some one 
had felt that the books of Samuel and Kings did not do enough 
ho^ior to the kings and priests. If you wish to see how differently 
the same events can be described by different writers, you must 
compare those older books with the two Books of Chronicles, 
written about B. C. 250. Not far from this time the book called 



1 Lesson xv. 2 Bible for Young, iii. chap. xxxi. 

3 Ps. xviii.; 2 Sam. xxii. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 65 

Ecclesiastes was written ; in which the writer represents Solomon 
as speaking, and declaring that neither riches nor wisdom brought 
any real happiness, but that life was only vanity and vexation, 
whether men tried to do well or not. It is not a very religious 
book, but it shows what people were thinking of in those days, 
and so is quite as interesting as many which are far better and 
more instructive. Last of all, about B. C. 160, came the Book 
of Daniel, a strange writing full of wild predictions, in imita- 
tion of the old prophets, which readers now-a-days find it very 
difficult to understand. 

All these books we always see bound together in one volume ; 
but we must remember that it took many centuries to write 
them all, and that they could not have been brought together 
until the last was written. In reality several steps were taken, 
before the Old Testament became one book. First, the fiv^e books 
which stand first in the Bible were made up from many differ- 
ent sources, about the time of Ezra, and called the "Law of 
Moses,*' or ** the Law.'* For a long time this was the only 
thing read in the synagogues. Then, many years later, the 
writings of the prophets, including the books of Joshua, the 
Judges, Samuel, and Kings, which the prophets were supposed 
to have composed, were collected together and called " the 
Prophets.'' Finally, the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, and whatever 
else remained, were put into a third division by themselves, 
and, as there was no particular name to give them, were always 
called the " Other Writings." 

Beside all these were a number of books, written in the later 
years of Jewish history, about which there has always been a 
great dispute. Some Jews thought them as holy and useful as 
any part of the Old Testament, as many of them are; but others 
thought them too modern to be included among the sacred 
books of the nation, so they are usually placed by themselves. 
They are called the Apocryphal Books, and you will find them 
in many of your Bibles between the Old Testament and the 
!N'ew. 

You see then that Jewish literature was very full and rich, 
as I have said. It had in it prose and poetry, history and phi- 
losophy, law and prophecy, story and drama and song. And 



66 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

all this the Jews were very proud of, as well they might be, and 
thought one part quite as sacred as another. When books came 
to be printed instead of written, all these were put in a single 
volume; but in old times they were quite separate from each 
other, and were always spoken of either as distinct books, or as 
belonging to the *'Law," the "Prophets," or the "Other 
Writings. '* ^ 

The name Old Testament was not given, of course, until 
there was another book called the New Testament. 

REFERENCES. 

Davidson's " Introduction to Old Testament; " "Bible for Young People '* 
(iii. 435; iv. 86, 179, 225); (B. L. ii. 330, 402, 508); Knappert's "Religion 
of Israel," p. 240; Chadwick's "Bible of To-day;" Toy's "Religion of Is- 
rael " (Lesson xvii.-xix., xxi. xxii.) ; Sunderland's "What is the Bible? " 
Gannett's "Growth of a Religion," (Lesson iii., P. iii.; P. iv. B. (p. 50), 
also "Tabular View"); Renau's "Evangiles," chap. ii. ; R. P. Stebbins's 
" Study of the Pentateuch; " De Wette's " Introduction to Old Testament; " 
Unitarian Review, Nov. 1880, pp. 421-440 ; " Selections from the Apocry- 
pha " (Wisdom Series). 



1 Matt. V. 17; Luke xxiv. 44. Comp. Prologue of Jesus Son of Sirach, 
B. C. 130 ; Josephus against Apion, i. 8. 



LESSON XX. 
JESUS. 

1. When was Jesus born? 

2. Where was he born ? 

3. Who were his parents? 

4. Had he any brothers or sisters? 

5. Tell what you know about Nazareth. 

6. Who was Herod the Great? 

7. What other persons have you heard about who were living 
while Jesus lived ? 

8. Where do you find the accounts of his life? 

9. In what language were they written? 

10. How did it happen that they were not written in the same 
language which Jesus spoke? 

Texts : Matt. 11. 6, 18 ; Luke ii. 1, 10, 14, 32. 

NOTES. 

Not long after Judsea fell under the power of Rome, while 
Herod the Great was king, a child was born in Palestine, who, 
when he grew up, became a great religious teacher and leader. 
His name was Jesus. In those days, you will remember, there 
were no family names among the Jews, and people were dis- 
tinguished from each other in various ways, such as adding the 
father's name, or the place where they lived. The parents of 
Jesus were Joseph and Mary, and as there were many other 
children of the same name with himself, he was called Jesus 
the carpenter's son, or Jesus of Nazareth. 

Nazareth is a beautiful village among the hills of Galilee. It 
has narrow streets and small bare houses, like those described in 
an earlier lesson; but vines and fig-trees growing everywhere 
make it look very attractive, and there is a charming view from 
the hill-tops of the whole country around. W^hether Jesus was 



68 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

born there or only came there afterwards, we cannot tell certainly, 
for the accounts of his life were written so long after his death 
that people had very different stories to tell about him. One 
writer says that his parents lived in Bethlehem, a little village of 
Judaea, till after his birth, and then went to Nazareth ;i another 
says that they lived in Nazareth, but were on a journey to Beth- 
lehem when the child was born.^ But as Nazareth is almost always 
called his ''own country " or native place,^ we feel pretty sure 
that he lived there at any rate from very early days. 

It is just as hard to find out exactly when he was born as 
where; for no one could recall the year or the day of his birth, 
when the accounts were written, and the writers could only tell 
his age by guessing about how old he was when he began to 
preach.* Perhaps if they had known at first what he was to be- 
come in the world's history, they would have remembered these 
dates more carefully; but we can never know beforehand what 
lives are to be useful or great. About three hundred years after 
Jesus died, Dec. 25 was fixed upon as his birthday, and two 
hundred years later still the year of his birth was guessed at, so 
that dates could be reckoned from it, as they have been in cer- 
tain countries ever since. A. D. 1882, as you know, means 
eighteen hundred and eighty-two years since Jesus was born ; 
but it is now thought that he was really born a few years 
longer ago than that. 

When it was found, after Jesus' death, how good and holy a 
life he had led, many wonderful stories began to be told about 
his birth and infancy. In those days wonderful things were 
much more easily believed than now, and some unusual events 
were always supposed to happen when a great man was born. 
One such story tells us that, on the night of the young child's 
birth, angels were heard in the heavens singing "peace on earth, 
good will to men," ^ and that the shepherds in the fields listened 
to the song, and hastened to the manger where the child was 
born. Another says that magicians from the East were led by 
a star to the same manger, and brought rich offerings of gold and 

1 Matt. ii. 1, 22, 23. 2 Luke ii. 4, 7. 3 Matt. xiii. 54. 

4 Luke iii. 23. 5 Luke ii. 13, 14. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 69 

fragrant gums, and took back with them as a gift from the mother 
the cloth in which the infant was wrapped. ^ 

All this shows how much the world learned to honor Jesus 
after his death ; but at the time people little thought what the 
young peasant child was to become. His father and mother were 
both village people, and lived a quiet life like all their neighbors. 
Joseph was a carpenter, and no doubt brought up all his sons to 
the same trade; and in later years, when Jesus began to preach, 
he was sometimes taunted for being nothing but a carpenter. 2 
He had several brothers and sisters, some of whom are mentioned 
by name;^ so that although so little is known of his early life, 
we can think of him as growing up in a pleasant and loving 
home. 

Kome had just become an empire when Jesus was born, and 
had conquered the whole civilized world. Augustus was the 
first emperor, and had a very splendid reign, bringing about him 
all the noted writers and the great men of the time. Tiberius 
was emperor when Jesus died. The language spoken at the 
Court and in Italy was Latin, but in Asia Greek had been much 
used since the conquests of Alexander the Great, and was spoken 
in Judaea, at this time, by educated people, government officers, 
and travellers. The country people of Judaea, after the captivity, 
spoke a Syrian dialect, which was about as much like Hebrew as 
French or Italian is like Latin. This was the language which 
Jesus always spoke. 

All the accounts of Jesus which we have are written, not in 
Hebrew, but in Greek, so that the language cannot be exactly 
his own words, but only a translation of them. Four of these 
accounts, called the Four Gospels, have been collected in the 
New Testament. They are quite short, and were written so 
long after his death that many things which he said and did had 
been forgotten, but we are very fortunate in having even so much 
as this. Three of these, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and 
Luke, were begun about forty or fifty years after Jesus died, and 
contain all that the different writers could gather at that late day 

1 Matt. ii. 9-11; 1 Gospel of Infancy, iii. 1, 2. 

2 Mark vi. 3. ^ Matt. xiii. 55. 



70 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

from those who had seen Jesus, or had heard his sayings and 
doings repeated. The fourth, called the Gospel of John, was 
written much later, and makes Jesus' ministry considerably 
longer than either of the others. A great deal of what was 
best worth remembering must have been preserved in this way, 
and certainly it gives us a very beautiful and noble idea of Jesus' 
life. 

REFERENCES. 

''Bible for Young" (v. chap, i., iii.) (B. L. iii. 1-78); Geikie's "Life of 
Christ; " Farrar's " Life of Christ" and others; Keim's " Jesus of Nazara," 
ii. ; Chadwick's " The Man Jesus ; " Renan's Illustrated Vie de Jesus, chap, 
i., and illustration on p. 9; Milton's "Hymn on the Nativity; " Dommet's 
Hymn, "It was the calm and silent night." 



LESSON XXL 

CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 

1. How many of the four Gospels tell anything about Jesus' 
early life? 

2. What other books give any account of it? 

3. What kind of stories are told about him? 

4. How does it happen that we know so little of his child- 
hood? 

5. Did he go to school? 

6. How much did children learn in those days? 

7. Did he ever travel? 

8. Tell about one of his visits to Jerusalem and what happened 
there. 

9. What kind of religious services did he attend on the Sab- 
bath? 

Texts: Luke ii. 40, 49, 52. 

NOTES. 

There were a great many accounts of Jesus' life beside the 
four Gospels,^ but many were lost, and others were considered 
so improbable, that they were not put into the Xew Testament, 
but are always published by themselves and called "apocryphal," 
or doubtful. Still there are many interesting things in them. 
One of them called the *' Infancy of Jesus Christ," has a great 
deal more to say about the early life of Jesus than the four 
Gospels, and tries to show that he was much more wonderful, as 
a little child, than other children. These are some of the stories 
it tells : — 

Once, when Jesus was seven years old, and was playing with 
other boys, they all tried to make little birds and animals out of 
clay. They were quite proud of their success, but to the surprise 

1 Luke i. 1. 



72 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

of the other children, the oxen and asses which Jesus made began 
to walk, and his sparrows to fly. Often Jesus went with Joseph 
his father to make gates or pails or boxes ; and as Joseph was not 
a very good carpenter, according to this account, and often got 
his boards of the wrong size, his little son would make them 
longer or shorter as was needed, by simply touching or pulling 
them. AVhen he was first taken to school, instead of learning 
his alphabet, he began to question the master about the form 
and order of the letters, and then astonished him by explaining 
why Aleph (A) came before Beth (B), and what was the mean- 
ing of all the lines and points of the Hebrew characters. 

The " apocryphal " Gospels are full of such stories as these, 
which the writers themselves no doubt thought were true, and 
which were once believed by all, but which hardly any one be- 
lieves now, because they seem so improbable and childish. As 
tales of this kind were told about almost every great or good man 
in old times after his death, it is not strange that these were told 
about Jesus; but this should make us all the more careful in dis- 
tinguishing between the real incidents of his life and the imagi- 
nary ones. Fortunately his real life was so beautiful throughout 
that it does not need any make-believe wonders to improve it. 

We cannot help feeling sorry that the early companions or the 
parents of Jesus could not have known how interesting to us all 
the little deeds of his childhood would be, and so have kept some 
record of them. As it is, only one Gospel has anything to say 
about his childhood, and that tells us almost nothing. The only 
things we know are, that he lived in Nazareth, that he learned 
to work at his father's trade, and that he probably w^ent to school 
with other children, and studied whatever was then taught to 
Jewish boys. Schools for young children were just beginning 
about that time. There were no school-houses, and no regular 
sdjool-masters^but the children w-ent every day to the synagogue, 
where one of the attendants taught them how to read and write, 
and to repeat passages from the Scriptures. This was probably 
all the instruction which Jesus ever received, except what his 
father may have given him at home about his own people and 
their history; and as there were no printed books in those days, 
and only rich people or scholars owned the written ones, he can- 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 73 

not have had many opportunities to read. But this was the edu- 
cation which all young persons received except the few who 
went to the higher schools at Jerusalem; and when there were 
so few books, no doubt children learned a great deal more from 
what they saw and heard than they do now. 

Like all other Jewish childien, Jesus, after he was five years 
old, went with his parents every Sabbath to the Synagogue, and 
there heard the Jewish Scriptures and the discourses of the rab- 
bis. If he had lived in Jerusalem he would have gone often to 
the Temple, and seen the sacrifices and the incense, and heard 
the prayers and chan tings of the priests ; but in Galilee the chil- 
dren knew very little of these things except what their parents 
told them. Three times a year, however, there used to be grand 
processions to Jerusalem to attend the feasts, and these every 
man was expected to join, and often whole families joined also. 
The parents of Jesus went in this way every year to the pass- 
over, and once, when Jesus was twelve years old, they took him 
with them. It was probably his first journey, and must have 
been a very important event in his life to join the long procession 
of pilgrims, and see for the first time the great city of Jerusalem 
and its beautiful Temple. He was so much interested and ex- 
cited by it that when his father and mother started for home he 
lingered behind, and they had to return after a day's journey and 
look for him. They found him in the Temple grounds, listeaing 
to some of the learned men who were conversing there, and put- 
ting questions of his own to them. Some of the accounts say 
that he explained the Scriptures to them, and surprised them by 
telling the number and movements of the stars, the bones, veins, 
and arteries of the body, and how the soul came to the body and 
left it.i This is no doubt a very exaggerated account, the real 
truth being probably that he astonished those who stood around 
by his intelligent questions and answers ; but at any rate the 
incident was never forgotten, and is almost the only event of his 
childhood that is given in the four Gospels. More than one 
great artist has made it the subject of a picture. 

1 1 Gospel of the Infancy, chap. xxi. 



74 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

REFERENCES. 

Keim's "Jesus of Nazara," ii. ; Geikie, Farrar, «S:c. ; Greg's "Scenes 
from the Life of Jesus;" ''Bible for the Young," v. chap, vi.; (B. L. iii. 
79-95); Edersheim's "Jewish Social Life," p. 120; Helen's Pilgrimage; 
Frothingham's "Child's Book of Religion" (Legends of Virtue); Longfel- 
low's "Golden Legend" (Miracle Play); Illustrated Renan, pp. 8, 17, 33; 
Eggleston's " Christ in Art " (Bida's illustrations) ; Holman Hunt's picture 
of " Christ with the Doctors." 



LESSON XXII. 

BEGINNING OF JESUS' MINISTRY. 

1. In what condition was Judaea as Jesus grew up? 

2. In what condition was the Jewish religion? 

3. What reformer appeared at that time ? 

4. Tell something about his preaching. 

5. What connection had Jesus with John the Baptist ? 

6. When did he leave John and why? 

7. Why did not Jesus return to Nazareth to live ? 

8. When did he begin his ministry ? 

9. Point out Nazareth and Capernaum on the map. 

Texts: Isa. xl. 3; Ixi. 1; Matt. iii. 1, 2, 8, 10; iv. 10; Luke iv. 24. 

NOTES. 

As Jesus grew up in Nazareth the country was in a very 
troubled state. The Roman governors who ruled the land took 
less and less pains to please the people, and at one time created 
a great tumult in Jerusalem by bringing into the city military 
standards or shields with figures of the emperor upon them. 
The Jews thought such figures idolatrous, and were ready to die 
rather than allow them in their holy city.^ Beside this, the Jew- 
ish religion had grown quite formal and heartless, as every reli- 
gion is apt to do in which there are many ceremonies to observe. 
Many thought that if they went through the long and splendid 
service at the Temple, and observed the hundred little precepts 
which the Scribes laid down for them, ib made little difference 
what lives they led. 

While the country was in this unhappy condition, a very sin- 
gular reformer, named John, appeared, and tried to arouse the 

1 Josephus Antiq. xviii., iii. 1. 



76 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

people by his preaching. He lived in the wilderness of Judsea, 
dressed like a wild man in coarse camel's hair garments, and 
ate nothing but the honey and locusts which he found in the 
desert. As the people flocked out to see so strange a hermit, he 
used the severest language with them, told them of their hypoc- 
risy and wickedness, and called on them to repent and prepare 
for the coming of the '* kingdom of heaven," which he said was 
close '* at hand." By this he did not mean at all what we should 
mean by the kingdom of heaven, but the Jewish kingdom itself, 
which the Jews in those days believed Jehovah would re-establish 
at Jerusalem, driving out the Romans, punishing all the wicked, 
and making the Jews masters of the whole world. This they 
called the '^ kingdom of God," or "heaven," because they con- 
sidered Jehovah as its king; and John declared that this kingdom 
was to begin at once, and the people mast repent of their sins and 
so be ready for it. We know now what a mistaken expectation 
this was, but at that time it was very strong and real. As John 
baptized all his followers, by making them dip themselves in the 
river Jordan as if to be cleansed from their sins, he was called 
John the Baptist. He must have been a very bold and eloquent 
man, for he stirred the people as no one had done since the days 
of the old prophets. 

Among those who came to him from all parts of the country 
was Jesus, who left his home at Nazareth to listen to the new 
preacher. According to one writer,^ the mothers of John and of 
Jesus were related to each other, so that the children must have 
been always acquainted, but as the other writers do not mention 
this we cannot be sure of it. Jesus had grown up by this time, 
though his exact age is uncertain, as one book speaks of him as 
*' about thirty," 2 Y^rhile another says he was*' not yet fifty/' 
as though he were nearly that age.^ However this may have 
been^ he had no doubt often mourned over the evil state of 
things among his people, and longed to help them. When John, 
the stern prophet, appeared, Jesus went into the wilderness to 
join him, was baptized like all John's followers, and remained 
as long as John was there, listening to his fiery words, as he 

1 Luke i. 36. 2 Luke iii. 23. s John viii. 57. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 77 

preached of the kingdom of heaven that was so soon to come. 
At one time Jesus spent many days alone in the desert, and 
passed through such a struggle with himself, that it seemed as 
if evil spirits were tempting him to give up all thoughts of serv- 
ing his fellow-men, and devote himself to his own pleasure 
and good alone. A very striking account of this incident, in 
which Satan is represented as really appearing and speaking, is 
given in two of the Gospels. 

After a time John, who had given great offence to Herod by 
his bold words, was thrown into prison, and Jesus then returned 
to Galilee to carry on his ministry alone. Instead of going back 
to his home in Nazareth, however, he went to Capernaum to live; 
a much larger and more central town on Lake Gennesareth, 
through which ran one of the great highways from the East to 
the Mediterranean and Egypt. 

One reason given for his going to Capernaum is that the 
people of Nazareth, who had always known him as a poor car- 
penter and son of a carpenter, could not believe that he had 
anything to say that was worth their hearing. If the wonder- 
ful stories of his childhood which were told in the last lesson 
had been really true his townspeople would of course have 
been the very first to believe in his teaching, but as it was they 
would not listen to him. An interesting story is told in one 
of the Gospels of his going into the synagogue at Nazareth on 
the Sabbath, and standing up to speak, as people were allowed 
to do after the Scripture reading. Quoting a beautiful pas- 
sage from one of the prophets, he told the people that he was 
sent to them like the old prophet himself, *'to heal the broken- 
hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering 
of sight to the blind." Instead of listening, however, the peo- 
ple all rose up angrily, drove him out of the city, and tried to 
kill him.i 

Whether this w^as his real reason or not, it is certain that he 
left Nazareth as soon as he began to preach, and lived from 
that time at Capernaum, where his winning words soon drew 
many followers around him. 

1 Luke iv. 16-30. 



78 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

REFERENCES. 

Lives of Jesus; Hausrath's "New Testament Times;" "Bible for the 
Young " (v. chap. 7-iO), (B. L. iii. 96-155) ; Chadwick's " Man Jesus ; " Mar- 
tineau's "Hours of Thought" (Ser. i.); "Illustrated Renan," pp.48, 52, 
57,61, 69, 80, 84, 141, 145; Longfellow's "Divine Tragedy;" Milton's 
"Paradise Regained;" Stopford Brooke's "Sermons," Series L, Sermons 
xii., xviii., xix. 



LESSON XXIII. 

HOW JESUS PREACHED. 

1. What do you understand by a quotation ? 

2. Give some instance where one writer quotes another. 

3. What writers did Jesus sometimes quote ? 

4. Give some instances of this. 

5. What is a parable ? 

6. In what parts of the world are parables most used ? 

7. Repeat some parable of Jesus, and say what you think it 
means. 

8. What is the difference between a parable and a fable ? 

9. What are the Beatitudes ? 

10. What is the sermon on the mount ? 

Texts: Matt. v. 3-9, 17, 38, 39, 44; vi. 28, 29; xiii. 3-8, 44-46. 

NOTES. 

When we speak of Jesus as preaching we must remember 
what a different thing preaching was then from what it is now. 
There were no regular sermons, or regular preachers, but the 
Jewish speakers explained the Scriptures in the Synagogue on 
the Sabbath, or addressed the people in the open air. 

In explaining their Scriptures the Jews were very fond of tra- 
cing resemblances between what the prophets and other writers 
had said, and the events which were actually happening, to prove 
that their prophets had foretold future events. Sometimes they 
were very ingenious in this, as several passages in the New Tes- 
tament show.i Jesus also quoted much from the Jewish Scrip- 

1 Matt. ii. 23 ; iii. 3 ; iv. 14; xxi. 4, 5. Comp. Isa. xi. 1 ; xl. 3 ; ix. 1, 2 ; Zach. 
ix. 9. 



80 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

tures, but often in a very different way from others. Sometimes 
he wished to show how imperfect the old teaching was, and to 
give his followers higher ideas of duty and right. ^ Sometimes 
his purpose was simply to explain or illustrate what he was say- 
ing, just as speakers in these days quote striking passages of 
poetry or prose from other writers. ^ One passage from the old 
prophets, as we saw in the last lesson, he applied to himself,^ 
others he applied, in the same way, to John the Baptist,^ as ful- 
filling certain predictions in the Old Testament. Whether he 
meant that the predictions were fulfilled in just the way that the 
prophet meant, or in a different and better way, we cannot tell ; 
but in either case it drew the attention of the people to his teach- 
ings and made them remember his words. 

But he had other and much more familiar ways of teaching. 
As he met his followers generally in the open air, he was fond 
of pointing to the flowers and birds and fields, to show what 
beautiful lessons they tell of God's love and care.^ Instead of 
waiting for special times to speak on religious matters, he often 
took common events, just as they happened, and drew important 
truths from them.^ Much of his best teaching was in the form 
of stories, or what were then called parables. In the East, where 
all the ways of life are so different from ours, people have always 
used much more poetic and figurative forms of speech than is 
common with us. Many images and comparisons which we em- 
ploy only in poetry they use in common conversation, addressing 
each other every day in what seems to us very inflated and high- 
sounding language. All such things as proverbs, apologues, 
parables and fables, came first from the East. Parables are 
common incidents, which either have happened or might happen, 
so told as to teach some lesson or moral. Jesus used this way of 
teaching more than almost any other, sometimes taking parables 
-which other Jewish teachers had used, sometimes making them 
himself. Many of them are very beautiful, and were of course 
understood much better and remembered longer than any moral 

1 Matt. V. 21-44. 

2 Matt. xiii. 14; xxi. 16. Comp. Isa. vi. 9, 10; Ps. viii. 2. 

3 Luke iv. 18. ■* Matt. xi. 10, 14. Comp. Malachi iii. 1 ; iv. 5. 
« Matt. vi. 26, 28; x. 29. 6 Matt. xii. 47; xix. 13; xx. 20. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 81 

rules or arguments would have been. When he wished to tell 
his hearers that they should use whatever powers God had given 
them, whether little or great, he told them of a rich man going 
on a journey, and leaving different amounts of money to different 
servants to trade with while he was away; and how those who 
had a good deal were very industrious, and those who had little 
were idle, and had nothing to show when he came back. Perhaps 
his hearers knew of just such a case as this ; at any rate he told 
the story in such a way no doubt as to make them all feel that 
the smallest gifts or opportunities were to be used as faithfully 
as the greatest. Any fault which he noticed among his followers 
he was apt to correct in some such way as this, and many of his 
parables on such occasions have been preserved. ^ Indeed some 
of his hearers, when they tried to recall his preaching after- 
wards, could not remember that he had ever taught except by 
parables. 2 

But he did teach in many other ways, some of them even 
more tender and beautiful than his parables. One series of 
short sayings, in which he tried to comfort his hearers in their 
poverty and trial, by telling them that it was not the rich or 
proud or prosperous who were happiest, but often those who 
suffer most, are called the " Beatitudes," and have brought 
more consolation and peace to men's hearts than almost any 
words that were ever spoken.^ These sayings were not always 
understood at the time, as such truths seldom are, and some 
who heard him evidently thought he was promising them actual 
food and riches.'* But it is easy for us now to understand what 
he really meant. 

There is nothing in the words of Jesus which we should call 
a sermon ; for he generally spoke wherever he happened to be, 
whether there were many to hear him or few, and whether 
there was little to say or much. One of the writers of the New 
Testament, however, has brought together a number of his 
sayings, as though they were all spoken at once, when he was 

1 Matt. xiii. Comp. " Bible for Young," v. 181-198. 

2 Matt. xiii. 34; Mark iv. 33, 34. 3 Matt. v. 1-12. 
4 Luke vi. 20-26. 

6 



82 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

standing on a hillside with his hearers gathered below him.^ 
This is always called the ** Sermon on the Mount." 

REFERENCES. 

"Bible for Young" (v. chap. x.. xi., xii., p. 211); (B. L. iii. 139-172); 
Frothingham's " Stories from the Lips of the Teacher; " "Illustrated Renan," 
pp. 48, 84, 105. 

1 Matt, v.-vii. 



i 



LESSON XXIV. 

JESUS AND THE COMMON PEOPLE. 

1. With what class of people did Jesus have most to do? 

2. Who were the Publicans? 

3. What was meant then by ** sinners " ? 

4. How did Jesus treat such people? 

5. How were they usually treated? 

6. Mention some of the places and occasions of his preaching. 

7. What were some of the subjects that he talked about? 

8. Can you tell some anecdote to show how his teaching 
differed from that of to-day? ^ 

Texts: Isa. xlii. 1-3 ; Matt. vi. 19, 20, 24; xix. 14; Luke vi. 41, 42, 43. 

NOTES. 

Jesus lived all his life among the common people of the towns 
and villages of Galilee. The inhabitants of Judaea, and espe- 
cially of Jerusalem, looked down upon the Galileans as ignorant 
country people, and ridiculed their pronunciation and rustic 
ways ; but they were honest and industrious enough, and were 
none the worse for their simple manners. As Capernaum was 
on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, many of the early followers 
of Jesus were fishermen. In Chorazin and Bethsaida, too, little 
villages which he often visited, the people must have been 
chiefly fishermen. No matter how poor or ignorant they were, 
Jesus was quite content to be among them, and gave some of 
his finest precepts in answer to their questions. 

Indeed, he did not avoid even those whom the rest of the 
nation despised as outcasts. Among these were certain persons 
who had been turned out of the synagogues for some fault or 

1 Matt, xviii. 1-3; Luke xxi. 1-3; vii. 36, or some other of the kind. 



84 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

other, and 'who were called *' sinners." The Jews hated these 
sinners, and treated them always as if they were unclean, 
and unfit to enter their houses or sit at their tables. Still 
more hateful to them were the publicans, or those who collected 
taxes of their fellow-countrymen to support their Roman 
masters. These publicans, whatever their motives, the Jews 
denounced as traitors, cast them out of the synagogues, for- 
bade them to make wills, and insulted them in every possible 
way. 

No doubt many of these publicans and sinners were really 
very low or avaricious men, as they were considered ; but Jesus 
looked upon them all as brethren, and the more others despised 
them, the more anxious he was to help them. Once he shocked 
all his friends, and enraged his enemies, by inviting one of 
these publicans, named Matthew or Levi, to his own house, and 
eating with him at the table. ^ Nothing could have lowered 
him more in the eyes of his countrymen, who showed their con- 
tempt by calling Jesus the ^' friend of publicans and sinners." 
Little did he mind their taunts, however; and soon the outcast 
and degraded of every kind found that in him they had a true 
friend. It was touching to see how many ways they took of 
showing their gratitude and reverence. Once, when he was at 
table in a Pharisee's house, a woman whom he had saved from 
evil habits pushed her way into the house, and kissed his feet 
as he lay upon the couch, pouring ointment over them, and 
wiping them with her hair. 2 

In this way Jesus won the confidence of the people wherever 
he went. He joined in all their pursuits, went to their feasts 
and marriages,^ lived in their families,^ and was with them at 
their work. They learned to bring all their troubles and dis- 
putes to him,^ were rebuked by him for their faults,^ and were 
made to feel ashamed of whatever was mean in their own con- 
duct, and to admire what was beautiful in others.'' He was 
very tender and loving, too, with little children, drew them to 

1 Matt. ix. 9-11. 2 Luke vii. 37, 38. 3 Luke v. 29; John ii. 1, 2. 
4 Luke X. 38 ; xix. 5. 5 Luke xii. 13; ix. 46, 47; Matt, xviii. 21. 

6 Matt. vi. 19, 24, 28; vii. 3-5. 

7 Matt. vi. 2, 5; Luke xviii. 10-14; xxi. 1-3. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. "85 

him by his kindness, and loved to talk about their purity and 
innocence.^ 

All this is very different, as I have said, from the way in 
which preachers live or speak to-day. It made but little differ- 
ence to him where he was, or who were with him when he 
spoke. Sometimes it was in his own house or at a friend's 
table, sometimes as he strolled with his companions through 
the fields, sometimes as he stood on the hillside or on the shore, 
or in a ship,^ sometimes from the desk in the synagogues.^ In 
this way he became known and loved in Capernaum, and 
through many of the towns and villages of Galilee. 

REFERENCES. 

Edersheim's "Social Life" (chap, iv.); "Bible for Young'* (v. chap. 
XV., XX.); (B. L. iii. 196-210, 253-259) ; Chadwick's "Man Jesus " (chap, 
ii.) ; " Christ and the Little Ones " (Whittier's " Child Life *') ; " Illustrated 
Renan," pp. 84, 105, 115, 120, 124, 128, 137, 201, 205. 

1 Matt, xviii. 2, 3; xix. 13, 14. 

2 Mark ii. 1, 2; Luke xiv. 1-35; Matt. xii. 1-8; v. 1; xiii. 1, 2. 

3 Matt. iv. 23; ix. 35 ; xiii. 54. 



LESSON XXV. 

COMPANIONS OF JESUS. 

1. What homes did Jesus visit in Capernaum? 

2. Do you think he had any home there of his own? 

3. What is meant by liis '• disciples? '' 

4. Give the names of some of them. 

5. What can you tell about Peter? 

6. What about John? 

7. Tell what you know of any of the others ? 

8. How much were they with Jesus? 

9. What had they to do in recording his teachings? 

Texts: Matt. x. 38, 39; viii. 20; xx. 26, 27; Mark viii. 36, 37. 

NOTES. 

Tn going to Capernaum, Jesus had of cc^^rse left his friends and 
home at Nazareth behind him. As he went fcO much from place 
to place, perhaps he had no regular abode afterwards, though 
once or twice the Gospels speak of his house at Capernaum.^ 
But he found new homes open to him there, and drew many 
friends about him, who loved to be with him and hear his words. 
Among these were two brothers, both fishermen, named Simon 
and Andrew. Andrew had been a disciple of John the Baptist, 
according to one account, ^ and so had perhaps known Jesus be- 
fore; Simon was married, and Jesus became a frequent visitor at 
his house, where several interesting events took place. ^ He 
visited also the family of Zebedee, a fisherman and man of 
means,* whose two sons, James and John, with their mother, not 
only received Jesus at their house, but went with him when he 
left Capernaum, and were with him so long as he lived. ^ 

1 Mark ii. 1. 2 John i. 35, 40. 3 Matt. viii. 14. 

* Mark i. 20. 6 Matt, xxvii. 56, 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 87 

Among these friends were twelve who became more intimate 
with him than any others, and called themselves his disciples or 
scholars. Sometimes they were called the '* Apostles," or '' those 
who were sent out," but this was probably after Jesus' death. 
These twelve seem to have stayed with Jesus all the time, ex- 
cept when he sent them to teach others, and they probably lived 
under the same roof with him, as one family, i^o doubt, it was 
through them that most of his sayings and doings were after- 
wards reported; though no record was made at the time, and 
Jesus gave them no directions about writing anything down. 
Some of these disciples were naturally more attached to him than 
others, but there was no difference of rank or position among 
them, and Jesus always checked them when they tried to claim 
superiority over each other, or to ask him, as they sometimes did, 
to give them places of honor when he was raised to power among 
the Jews.i 

Among these twelve the one of whom we hear most was Simon, 
an impulsive ardent man, who was very devoted to Jesus, and 
eager to take part with him in everything, although his courage 
was apt to fail him when the real danger came. Jesus was very 
fond of Simon, and saw, as he thought, such strong traits of 
character in him, that he called him a " rock," or " Peter," and 
this afterwards took the place of his real name. Andrew, his 
brother, was also one of the twelve, but we know nothing about 
him. Next to Peter, the leading disciples were James and John, 
the sons of Zebedee, whom Jesus called '* Boanerges," or sons of 
thunder, because of their fiery and passionate natures. ^ Once, 
when they all wished to pass through a little village, and the in- 
habitants for some reason would not allow them to, these brothers 
proposed to call fire from heaven to burn the village, but Jesus 
rebuked their violence.^ At another time they begged him to 
promise them the two chief offices in his kingdom , as though they 
expected him to be an earthly monarch, with a palace and throne."* 
This showed that they did not wholly understand his character 
or teachings, but he was strongly attached to them, and is thought 

1 Matt. XX. 25, 26: Luke xxii. 24-26. 2 Mark iii. 17. 

3 Luke ix. 54. ^ Mark x. 35-37. 



88 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

to have loved John more than any of his other followers. One 
of the Gospels speaks of the *' disciple whom Jesus loved," ^ and 
this is generally supposed to mean John. Another disciple was 
Matthew, who belonged to the class of publicans whom the Jews 
hated so bitterly. Perhaps he collected customs on the great 
highway from Damascus to the Mediterranean, which ran near 
Capernaum.^ Beside these was another Simon, called the Zealot,^ 
who probably had belonged to a party among the Jews who were 
so zealous for their country that they resisted the payment of 
taxes to the Romans. Still another was Judas, who came from 
a little village in the south part of Palestine, called Kariot, 
and so was named Judas Is-Kariot.'* How he came to join the 
disciples we cannot tell, as all the others were Galileans; but he 
was trusted with the money on which Jesus and his followers 
lived, and proved in the end dishonest and faithless. Beside 
these seven were Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Lebbseus, and 
another James, about all of whom we know hardly anything. 
These are usually considered the twelve, but either there was 
some mistake about their names, or else different men belonged 
at different times, as another Judas is somewhere mentioned,^ 
and also a Nathaniel,^ as if they were also disciples. 

These were the most intimate friends that Jesus ever had, and 
most of them were with him through all his ministry. They 
could not always understand his words, as we have seen,"^ and 
when he spoke of the *' kingdom of heaven '' were apt, like all 
the other Jews, to think of an earthly empire, with Jesus as its 
monarch, and Jerusalem as its royal city ; but they were none 
the less faithful or loyal for this^ and felt the goodness and 
greatness of their leader, if they did not know all that he 
meant. He called on them to make great sacrifices, and to give up 
everything, as he had done, and to expect all kinds of persecu- 
tion and suffering, if they joined him,^ but they followed him 
nevertheless, and went through many of his hardest trials with 

1 John xiii. 23. 2 Matt. ix. 9. 8 Luke vi. 15. 

4 Man of Kariot. 5 Luke vi. 16; Acts i. 13. 6 John i. 45-51; xxi. 2. 

7 Matt, xviii. 1-3, 21; xx. 21 ; Mark iv. 10; Luke ix. 45; John xii. 16. 

8 Matt. V. 11; X. 16-22; vui. 19-22. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 89 

him. After his death, they recalled his words, and saw more 
plainly what his meaning was.^ 

REFERENCES. 

"Bible for Young '» (v. chap, xiv.) (B. L. iii. 178-196); Keim's "Jesus 
of Nazara" (iii. 250-281) ; "The Jesus of History" (Book ii.); Furness's 
" Jesus and his Biographers ; " Furness's " Jesus ; " Hase's " Life of Jesus ; " 
Renan's "Vie de J^sus " (chap, viii.); also illustrations on pp. 93, 124, 137. 

1 John xii. 16. 



LESSON XXVL 
WORKS OF HEALING. 

1. How did the Jewish idea of disease differ from ours ? 

2. How did they expect sickness to be healed? 

3. Had they as many physicians as we, and if not, why? 

4. What was meant by " possessed? '* 

5. What were some of the ways of driving out spirits ? 

6. Who were brought to Jesus? 

7. What power had he over sickness ? 

8. What idea of his character does this give? 

Texts: Matt. viii. 17; xii. 43; John iv. 48. 

NOTES. 

Beside being a preacher, Jesus had a very fine and strong in- 
fluence over those about him, so that they learned to come to him 
with all their sorrows and cares. They even brought the sick to 
him to be healed. This seems to us very strange at first ; but we 
must remember that the »Tews had quite different ideas about 
sickness from ours to-day, and that neither people nor doctors 
had much knowledge of diseases. Instead of supposing, as we 
do, that sickness came from exposure or over- work, or other 
natural causes, they thought it a punishment from God for some 
sin which the person himself or his parents had committed."^ 
Some sicknesses they thought were caused by evil spirits. When 
any one was deaf or dumb or insane, or subject to convulsions or 
fits, they imagined that some demon had taken possession of his 
body, and was making him tear and bruise himself, or shout and 
rave. Instead of speaking of such people, as we do, as insane or 
mad or epileptic, they called them " possessed." ^ 

Such diseases were to be cured, as the Jews thought, not by 

1 John ix. 2. 2 Mark v. 2-5: Luke viii. 29; ix. 39. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 91 

giving medicine, but by driving out the demons; and a certain 
class of men were supposed to have the power of doing this. 
They were called exorcists, and the Jews went to them, instead 
of going to doctors. These exorcists had various ways of expel- 
ling demons, or pretending to do so; sometimes it was by playing 
the harp or other musical instrument, sometimes by speaking 
magical words, just as in your fairy stories; sometimes by using 
certain roots or herbs which had magical properties. Some of 
these methods were thought to have been practised since the 
time of Solomon. 1 These were all superstitions of course, and in 
many countries books had been written against them, and they 
had been given up before the time of Jesus ; but in the East they 
continued still, and have lasted till our own times. 

In the days of which we are speaking, these magicians were 
very numerous, and Jesus sometimes speaks as if everyone be- 
lieved in them. 2 When it was found how great and good he 
was, it was supposed at once that he would be able to heal dis- 
eases ; and sick people from all parts of Galilee, lunatic and deaf 
and palsied, were brought to him for him to put his hands on 
them. He was very unwilling to do anything of this kind, not 
wishing to encourage such superstitions, perhaps, or else prefer- 
ring that his followers should come to him from higher motives.* 
But the sight of their suffering evidently touched his pity, and 
whenever he found that he could help them he was eager to do so. 

Everyone knows that it is not medicine alone that cures sick- 
ness, but anything that soothes the nerves or acts upon the mind. 
Some people carry repose and strength into a sick-room, and 
make the sick person better, whenever they enter. In hospitals, 
too, some doctors have great control over the insane, simply by 
their voice or manner. We can easily imagine that Jesus, with 
all his purity and strength of character, would possess this power 
in the highest degree; and many things prove that he had singu- 
lar influence over the sick. It is strange how eager they were to 
see him, or hear his voice, or even to touch his garments.^ As 

1 Josephus' Antiquities, vi. 8, 2; viii. 2, 5. 2 Matt. xii. 27. 

3 Matt. ix. 30; xii. 39; xiii. 58; John iv. 48. 

4 Matt. ix. 21; Mark vi. 56-, viii. 22; Luke xviii. 15. 



92 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

they came into his gentle presence, new life came to them, and 
fresh peace and hope. At his voice those who fancied them- 
selves possessed of demons felt the spirits fly, and their natural 
power return. Their own imagination helped them much, no 
doubt, but his touch or glance helped them more ; and many who 
had tried other cures in vain went away from his presence 
healed. Sometimes his disciples attempted to do the same 
things, with but poor success,^ although Jesus assured them 
that he had no power which they and others did not also possess.*^ 
But he exercised an influence over both sick and well which none 
of his followers could equal. 

Of course, these wonderful acts of Jesus began at once to be 
talked about, and after his death were greatly exaggerated, as all 
such reports are, until it came to be believed that he could do any 
marvellous thing which he chose. You will remember what 
strange things were told of him in the Apocryphal Gospels, and 
some of the same tales found their way into the Xew Testament 
itself, where he is sometimes represented as quieting storms, 
multiplying a few loaves into a great many, and walking upon the 
sea. But Jesus himself never encouraged these reports, and had 
no desire to be remembered as a worker of miracles, or to have 
his good deeds magnified. Whatever power goes with goodness 
and greatness certainly belonged to him, and he could not help 
using it; but he preferred that people should come to him for the 
sake of their souls rather than their bodies, and only cared to 
make them better, and teach them higher ideas of God. 

REFERENCES. 

Keim's "Jesus of Nazara'' (iii. 152-249); Josephus' "Jewish War*' 
(vii. 6, 3); "Bible for Young " (v. 166-176) (B. L. iii. 130-138); Me3^er's 
Commentaries on above passages : Hase's " Life of Jesus " (96-100) ; Schen- 
kel's "Character of Jesus ;"Edersheim's "Social Life of Jews " (chap, x.); 
ISIanchester Manual (VoL ii. No. I., pp. 97, 100, 134-141); Kenan's "Vie de 
Jesus " (illustrations, pp. 176, 180). 

1 Matt. X vii. 16. 

2 Matt. X. 8; xvii. 20; xii. 27; John xiv. 12. 



LESSON XXVII. 

JESUS THE CHRIST. 

1. What is the meaning of the word Christ? 

2. What is the difference between Christ and Messiah? 

3. What did the Jews understand by the ** Kingdom of 
heaven? " 

4. Why was Jesus sometimes called Christ? 

5. Was he the kind of Messiah the people were expecting? 

6. In what sense was he a Messiah? 

7. Do you think he had any desire to be a king or ruler? 

Texts: Isa. ix.6; xi. 1; xl. 1, 2; Matt. iv. 17; v. 3; xiii. 33, 44; Luke 
xvii. 21. 

NOTES. 

We have seen how the people revered Jesus as a great and 
good teacher. But they thought him something more than a 
teacher. For a great while the Jews had been expecting their 
kingdom to be restored, and a new king to appear as powerful as 
any before. Their Scriptures, as they thought, promised them 
that the kingdom at Jerusalem should last forever, and that the 
family of David should always rule them.^ They could not be- 
lieve that such promises would be broken. So they bore all their 
defeats patiently, and still expected the new king to appear. 
They spoke of him always as the *' Messiah/' or " anointed," 
because the Jewish kings were always anointed with oil on tak- 
ing office. *' Messiah" is a Hebrew^ word, but when the Greek 
language began to be used he was called the "Christ," which 
is the Greek word for the same thing. 

As time went on, the imagination of the Jews became more and 
more excited about this Messiah, and they dreamed of many won- 
derful things that would happen when he came. They thought 

1 Ez. xxviii. 25, 26 ; xxxvii. 25; Dan. ii. 44; vii. 14. 



94 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

he would conquer all' their enemies, and bring back to Jerusalem 
all the Jewish exiles ; that war and crime would cease forever ; 
that the new kingdom would be the most splendid the world had 
ever seen, and all who lived in it would have long lives, without 
any sickness or suffering. This kingdom they called '* the king- 
dom of God," or '' of heaven." Several persons had appeared 
from time to time, pretending to be this Messiah, and had 
caused the same sort of excitement that was felt in this country 
a few years ago, when people thought the world was coming to 
an end. 

When Jesus began to preach and attract so much attention in 
Galilee, every one asked at once whether this might not be the 
expected Messiah. There were all sorts of strange ideas about 
him. Some thought that John the Baptist had come back to 
life again, after being killed; some thought that one of the old 
prophets had returned to earth, to announce that the Messiah 
was coming ; ^ but many believed that Jesus was really the Mes- 
siah himself, and would soon declare himself king of the Jews. 
At one time the people seized him, and tried to force him to be 
king. 2 Some began to study into his family history, to see if he 
was not descended from David, as every Jewish king should be. 
Two of the lists which were made out for this purpose still re- 
main,**^ quite different from each other, but both written to show 
that Joseph, the father of Jesus, w^as one of David's direct des- 
cendants. Others brought together all the passages of the Old 
Testament which describe the coming of a great deliverer, and 
applied them to Jesus, although they had been meant for some 
one living at the time they were written. 

So Jesus came to be called the Messiah or Christ, and his dis- 
ciples as well as others expected him to become the ruler of an 
earthly kingdom which w^ould last forever. Jesus himself had 
no such purpose as this, and tried hard to show his disciples that 
theTe was another and higher kind of heavenly kingdom than 
they were looking for."* Bat at the same tim_e he allowed him- 
self to be called the Christ, because he saw how eagerly the 
people were hoping for a deliverer, and he knew that he could 

1 Matt. xvi. 13, 14. 2 John vi. 15. 

3 Matt. i. 1-16; Luke iii. 23-28. 4 Mark x. 35-40. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 95 

help them in a much better way than they thought. It was a 
very brave thing to do, for he knew that it would set both Jews 
and Romans agaiust him, and perhaps cause his death, as it did. 
But he was resolved to establish a kingdom which should be 
really ' ' heavenly ; " that is, in which virtue and truth should 
reign. He told his follow*ers to expect not an outward kingdom 
but an inw^ard one; ^ not one for the powerful, but one for the 
humble and meek ; ^ and one which should spread through the 
world, not by conquests, but as the leaven in the meal, or the 
little seed growing into a great tree.^ Many of his parables were 
to give his disciples more spiritual ideas about the heavenly 
kingdom which he was to found, though they were not always 
understood at the time. 

Exactly what Jesus himself meant by the '^ kingdom of God," 
or by the name " Christ," we cannot be sure, as all the ideas of 
that age were so unlike ours, and as those who heard his w^ords 
so seldom understood them. But we can see that he meant 
something very noble and beautiful, and we know that he gave 
the name Messiah a far higher sense than it had ever had before. 
For us in these days, it does not increase our respect or reverence 
for him to call him the '* Christ; " but in those times people 
looked up to him much more for having that name. 

REFERENCES. 

Keim's "Jesus of Nazara" (iii. 48); Allen's "Hebrew Men and Times " 
(p. 379); "Bible for Young" (v. 398-415); (B. L. iii. 311-324); "The 
Jesus of History" (p. 253); Hase's " Life of Jesus; " Edersheim's " Social 
Life" (chap, v.); Renan's "Yie de Jesus" (chap, xvii.); Montgomerj^'s 
Hymn, " Hail to the Lord's Anointed." 

1 Luke xvii. 21. 2 Matt. v. 3, 5. 3 Matt. xiii. 31, 33. 



LESSON XXVIIL 

THE NEW RELIGION. 

1. Who did Jesus say would belong to tlie kingdom of 
heaven ? 

2. How did the teachings of Jesus about worship differ from 
the Jewish customs ? 

3. What new doctrine about prayer did he teach ? 

4. About the Sabbath ? 

5. How do you understand Mark ii. 27 ? 

6. How explain Matt. v. 38, 39 ? 

7. Explain Matt. vi. 17, 18. 

8. What new ideas of God did Jesus teach ? 

9. Repeat some verse in which he calls God his father. 

Texts: Matt. v. 23, 24; vi. 6; viii. 11; Mark ii. 18; John iv. 24. 

NOTES. 

Now let us see what new things Jesus taught. Although he 
was a Jew, and for the most of his life worshipped and be- 
lieved like otlier Jews, yet he thought many of their practices 
quite false, and had much purer and higher doctrines to teach 
than any which their Scriptures contained. 

For one thing, the Jews believed that God cared more for them 
than for any other nation in the world, and that when the king- 
dom of heaven was established they should be the only ones ad- 
mitted to it. But Jesus told them that only the holy and good 
would enter that kingdom, whether they were Jews or not, and 
^hat many whom they despised were more likely to go in than 

they.^ 

Then their Scriptures taught them that the true way to wor- 
ship God was with outward ceremonies and priests and sacrifices, 
and that they could atone for their sins only by making some 



Matt. V. 3, 8 ; viii. 11 ; xxi. 31. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BiBLE. 97 

offering at the altar. Several Old Testament books are quite full 
of directions about different sorts of sacrifices, and the dresses 
and duties of the priests ; and most of the Jews thought it more 
important to wash their hands before eating, and to avoid cer- 
tain kinds of food, than to be honest or forgiving. Jesus, 
however, had nothing to say about priests or sacrifices, but told 
tliem it was much more important to forgive a friend, after quar- 
relling with him, than to carry gifts to the altar, and that the 
words which came out of the mouth were more important than 
the food which went in.^ To show them that being a Jew or a 
priest did not necessarily make a man good, he told them a story 
of a man, robbed and beaten by thieves, who was taken care of 
by a hated Samaritan, while a priest and temple- attendant went 
by without noticing him.^ 

Beside this, when the Jews prayed, they went to the Temple 
or synagogue and repeated certain regular words, or had the 
priests repeat them. This was their only idea of prayer. It 
was thought very important to stand in a certain attitude, face 
a certain way, and pray at certain hours. Many liked to pray 
in the streets, that men might see them, and thought the longer 
and louder their prayers were, the better. To Jesus all this 
seemed very formal and hypocritical, and he reminded his disci- 
ples that to repeat prayers over and over again was a heathen 
practice ; and he made them feel that God was just as likely to 
hear a silent prayer in their own homes, as a public one in the 
synagogue or street. ^ 

The Jewish Scriptures also taught them to keep Saturday (the 
Sabbath) very strictly. 'No one was allowed to work on that 
day, or to walk more than a certain distance, or even to let horses 
or cattle work. A man had once been stoned to death for gather- 
ing sticks on Saturday. ^ These rules Jesus refused to obey, and 
took every opportunity to show that whatever was right on other 
days was right on the Sabbath. He did many things himself on 
that day w^hich others thought wicked, and which were certainly 
against the Jewish Scriptures ; and, when fault was found with 

1 Matt. V. 23, 24; xv. 2, 11. 2 Luke x. 30-35 

3 Matt. vi. 5-8. 4 Num. xv. 32-36. 

7 



98 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

him, said that the Sabbath was to make man holy, not man to 
make the Sabbath holy.^ 

Another Jewish law was, that when a man was injured by 
another, he should inflict the same injury in return, even if it 
were the loss of an eye or a tooth; 2 but Jesus taught his follow- 
ers to return, not evil for evil, but good for evil.^ Another duty 
which the Scriptures enjoined was that of fasting; but this, too, 
Jesus neglected, telling his disciples that it was much more im- 
portant to be pure of heart in God's sight than to fast and put 
on sad faces before men.^ 

Beside all this, the Jews, as we have seen, had always 
thought that Jehovah was to be found only in the Temple at 
Jerusalem; that they must go there, or else look towards the 
Temple, whenever they wished to worship him. Some of their 
teachers had tried before to correct this childish idea of God, 
but without success, and Jesus found them still holding it. 
None of his words are more beautiful than those in which he 
tells them that God is a spirit, not present in his Temple or at 
Jerusalem as a man w^ould be, but to be found everywhere, and 
to be worshipped just as well inwardly and silently, as with 
forms or words. ^ No words are oftener quoted than these, 
though I am afraid it will be a long time yet before they are 
really understood or obeyed. 

Some of the old Hebrew poets had spoken of God as a 
father, 6 but every one had understood the words figuratively, 
until Jesus took them literally, declaring that he was himself 
the child or son of God, and that all his followers were also 
children of a heavenly father. This language the Jews thought 
very blasphemous, for they did not think any one had a right 
to call himself really the child of God ; "^ but Jesus continued to 
teach this truth nevertheless ; and it would be hard for us now 
tolfchink of God in any other way than as a Father. 

All this offended the Pharisees, or stricter Jews, very much, 
and made them his bitter enemies. They thought these new 



1 Matt. xii. 1-5; 10-13; Mark ii. 27. 2 Lev. xxiv. 19, 20. 

3 Matt. V. 38, 39. 4 Matt. vi. 16-18 ; xi. 19; ix. 14. 

5 John iv. 24. 6 Pg. ciii. 13. ^ John x. 30-33. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 99 

doctrines were an attack upon their religion, and tried to 
silence him. After a while they succeeded, as we shall see; 
but not until the new truths had been planted in so many hearts 
that they could never be forgotten, so that they became in the 
end a new religion, quite different from Judaism. 

REFERENCES. 

*' Bible for Young" (v. chap, xvi., xvii., xxiv.); (B. L. iii.. 211-233; 
292-311); Kuenen's "Religion of Israel." (iii. 277); "The Jesus of His- 
tory" (Book ii. chap, v.); Lives of Jesus ; " Rabbi Jeshua , " "Illustrated 
Renan,"p. 192; Whittier's Hymn, "OLove! Life! our faith and sight." 



l.^fC. 



LESSON XXIX. 
CHARACTER OF JESUS. 

1. Can we tell how Jesus looked ? 

2. How can we form our idea of him ? 

3. Mention some noble or generous thing that he did. 

4. What seems to you the finest trait of his character ? 

5. What was his feeling about God ? 

6. Did people worship Jesus ? 

7. Did they think him a different sort of being from them- 
selves ? 

8. Do you think he wanted them to worship him ? 

9. Do you think he supposed God any nearer to him than to 
others? 

10. If I should call Jesus holy or divine, what should you 
think I meant? 

Texts: Matt, xxiii. 5, 23, 27, 11; Luke xx. 25. 

NOTES. 

From such short accounts as the four Gospels give, it is 
impossible for us to know as much about Jesus as is known of 
many distinguished men who lived at the same time. There 
are statues and busts of such persons as Augustus and Tiberius 
and Cicero, so that we can tell how they looked, and very full 
accounts of their daily life, so that we can imagine just how 
they lived. But no one thought of making a statue or bust of 
Jesus, or even of describing his appearance. There is one ac- 
count of him, to be sure, which was said to have been written 
by a Roman governor of Judsea who saw him, and which tells 
us the color of his hair and eyes, and the expression of his face; 
but this was really written three hundred years or more after his 
death, and so cannot be trusted. ^ There are also some very old 

1 Mrs. Jameson's "History of our Lord," i. 35. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 101 

frescoes on the walls of the Roman catacombs, which were once 
thought real portraits of Jesus, as the early Christians used to 
worship in the catacombs ; but these, too, were painted long after 
he died, and only show how in those days men thought he 
looked.! It was said, too, that the Emperor Tiberius had a head 
of Jesus cut in an emerald, and engravings from this are often 
shown now. The head is very interesting, and we should be 
glad to believe the story about it, but unfortunately there is no 
proof that it is true. 

But though the Bible gives no description of him, we can 
form an idea of him from all that he said and did, and can see 
how beautiful his spirit was. From the moment when he first 
went to hear John the Baptist preach, he gave up all the plea- 
sures of home, and exposed himself to every possible danger, 
that he might teach his countrymen the new truth that had 
come to him. We have seen what struggles he passed through 
in beginning his ministry, ^ but no peril or discomfort or perse- 
cution ever made him hesitate in his work. 

He showed his true character in refusing to be made a leader 
or ruler, as the people and even his disciples expected, and in 
saying that his kingdom was not of this world: The only 
authority he sought was the power he gained over others 
through their confidence and love, and this grew constantly 
stronger, and has not yet ceased. His disciples had such faith 
in his goodness and power that they thought nothing too diffi- 
cult for him to do, and were constantly expecting him to per- 
form some wonderful work. They believed he could heal all 
kinds of diseases, could calm tempests, and could even bring 
the dead back to life again. 

That he could be severe with wrong-doers as well as gentle 
and loving towards his friends, his treatment of the money- 
changers in the Temple proves,^ as well as his language toward 
many of the Jews whom he considered formal and hypocritical.^ 

1 Heaton's " Concise History of Painting; " Mrs. Jameson's "History of 
Our Lord." 

2 Lesson xxii. 3 Matt. xxi. 12, 13. 
4 Matt. vi. 2, 5, 7, 16; xv. 3-9; xxiii. 1-33. 



102 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

The more sincere and true he was himself, the more he felt any 
insincerity or baseness in others. But his life, for the most 
part, was peaceful and quiet, and he repaid all violence with 
forgiveness and love. 

The source of all his greatness was his religious nature. 
Others were satisfied if they went through certain religious 
forms, but he was content only if his soul was full of faith and 
devotion. Others thought of God, for the most part, as far 
away from the earth, and as having nothing in common with 
man; Jesus felt that God was his father, and made others feel 
so too. He used the strongest possible language to express 
this feeling about God; not only calling himself the Son of 
God, but saying that he was in God and God in him, and that 
he and the Father were one. Such faith in God and in man 
had seldom been seen before, and this made him the greatest 
religious teacher the world had known. 

In later times, men thought that one who had done and said 
such wonderful things must have been more than a man; so 
they called him a god and worshipped him. But his disciples 
did not worship him, and no one while he was living ever called 
him God, nor would he allow others even to call him good.^ 
He was quite content if his disciples loved him and followed 
him, and would much rather have them trust him than worship 
him. He never claimed to be of a different nature from those 
around him;^ but he proved to the world how holy a human 
soul and human life could become. 

REFERENCES. 

The Four Gospels; Scheiikers "Character of Jesus;" "Ecce Homo;" 
'•Rabbi Jeshua;" Clarke's "Legend of Thomas Didymus;" Chadwick's 
"Man Jesus; " "Illustrated Renan," pp. 159, 164, 216; Titian's " Tribute 
Money;" Photographs from the Catacombs. 

1 Matt. xix. 17. 2 John xvii. 21-23. 



LESSON XXX. 

OPPOSITION TO JESUS. 

1. Were any of Jesus' own family among his followers ? 

2. What do you think was the reason ? 

3. Who were his enemies ? 

4. Why did the Pharisees oppose him ? 

5. Did Jesus break any precepts of the Jewish Scriptures ? 

6. Mention some occasion which set the Pharisees against 
him . 

7. How did the Komans feel towards him ? 

8. W^here did he find most of his followers ? 

Texts: Matt. xii. 50; xxiii. 24; Mark iii. 21. 

NOTES. 

Let us see what the Jews thought of this new teacher, so diff- 
erent from any they had known before. In Nazareth, as we 
have seen, the people would not listen to him at all, but drove 
him out of the city with great violence. ^ They evidently felt 
that one w^hom they had known as a child, and had seen at work 
with his father, could have nothing to teach to them, and ought 
therefore to be silenced. ^ What was harder still for him to bear 
was that his own family did not understand him, and could not 
believe in him.^ None of his brothers or sisters are mentioned 
among those who followed him, and we never hear of their being 
with him or helping him. Instead of appreciating his high 
purposes and noble thoughts, they seem to have felt that he was 
beside himself to live as he did; and so followed him to Caper- 
naum, hoping to seize him and lead him back to his home, and 
his old life again. ^ We can imagine how this must have saddened 

1 Luke iv. 28, 29. 2 Mark vi. 2, 3. 

3 John vii. 5. 4 Mark iii. 20, 21, 31-35. 



104 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

him, and how important he must have felt his work to be, to have 
done without the sympathy of those who loved him best. 

The common people among the Jews, especially in Galilee, 
were very eager to hear him, and believed him a great prophet. 
They even thought him the Messiah whom they were expecting. 
The Pharisees, on the other hand, and all the leading Jews at 
Jerusalem, looked upon Jesus as one who was breaking many of 
their laws, disregarding their Scriptures, and leading the people 
into error and rebellion. He kept company with outcasts, he 
refused to observe the Sabbath, he denounced their long prayers 
and greetings in the market place, he accused those whom the 
people honored of hypocrisy and pride, and seemed to them in 
every way a dangerous person.^ 

The Romans, who governed the country, hardly noticed the 
Galilean preacher at all, not thinking him worthy of their atten- 
tion. The little province of Judaea seemed to them so insignifi- 
cant, and the Jewish people so few and unimportant, that a 
religious excitement in Galilee gave them little anxiety. Hardly 
any one in Rome heard of Jesus, or knew of his existence, or 
dreamed that the name of an obscure Jew could ever become 
celebrated in the world. 

So it happened that hardly any but the ]3eople of Galilee 
followed Jesus, and he soon found that his worst enemies were 
among his fellow-countrymen whom he was trying to help, and 
that their hatred was increasing every day. This made his 
ministry a very short one, as we shall see, but did not alter his 
determination or lessen his courage or his faith. 

REFERENCES. 

Lives of Jesus ; " Bible for Young," v. chap, xviii., xix., xx. (B. L. iii. 234- 
259); "Rabbi Jeshua;" "EcceHomo;" "Illustrated Renan," p. 224. 

1 Matt, xxiii. ; Luke xviii. 10-14. 



LESSON XXXI. 

JESUS IN JERUSALEM. 

1. What was tlie entire length of Jesus' ministry according to 
three of the Gospels ? 

2. How long did he preach in Jerusalem ? 

3. How was it according to the Fourth Gospel? 

4. Which account do you think the more probable ? 

5. Does it seem to you strange that there should be this dif- 
ference ? 

6. How was Jesus received in Galilee, and how in Jerusalem? 

7. Mention some event that happened in Jerusalem. 

8. In what dangers did Jesus find himself while there? 

Texts: Matt. xxi. 42; xxii. 37, 38, 39; xxiii. 26. 

NOTES. 

Jesus probably preached about a year in Galilee. We cannot 
be quite sure of this, for when the accounts came to be written 
people's memories varied strangely. Some were quite sure they 
remembered his being in Jerusalem at the time of three differ- 
ent Passovers, and at one or two other feasts beside. ^ If this 
were so, he must have preached for two or three years, and 
have been more than a year in Jerusalem. But others could 
not recollect his being in Jerusalem at all until the very end of 
his life, and were sure that he did almost all his teaching during 
a single year in Galilee. ^ In three of the Gospels nothing is 
said about any feasts or any visit to Jerusalem except the last, 
but Jesus is spoken of as spending all his time going from vil- 
lage to village in Galilee. It seems to us now as if matters of 
such interest ought to have been better remembered ; but as I 
have said, we never know how important any events are until 

1 John ii. 13; v. 1; vi. 4; vii. 2, 10; x. 22; xii. 1. 

2 Matt. iv. 12, 23; xix. 1; xx. 17, 18; xxi. 1-11. 



106 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

after they have happened. I am not sure that any of you would 
do better if you should try in 1910 or 1920 to describe things 
which are happening now in 1879, although you would have let- 
ters and newspapers to help your memory, and in those days they 
had none. Where the statements differ so much we have to 
choose between them; and as the first three Gospels were writ- 
ten earlier than the fourth, and as they all agree with each other 
about this, it seems more probable that their account is the cor- 
rect one, especially as it does not seem likely, if Jesus taught in 
Jerusalem a whole year, that any one could have forgotten it. 

We must suppose, then, that Jesus' entire ministry lasted about 
a year. When the time for the great feast of the Passover came, 
he determined to go with the other Jews, as his family had al- 
ways done,i to Jerusalem. Probably he would have gone in any 
case; but it was very natural, after he had once begun to preach, 
that he should wish to preach in Jerusalem, where the great 
leaders of the church were, and where the people came together 
from all parts of Judaea. His disciples went with him, we are 
told, and several women beside. One writer says that his mother 
also was with him at this time, and did not leave him until his 
death. 2 So they lived together in Jerusalem for two or three 
weeks. 

But Jesus found Jerusalem very different from Galilee. In- 
stead of being followed by crowds wherever he went, listening 
eagerly to all he said, he found every one avoiding and opposing 
him. While he was on his way to Jerusalem, messengers had 
been sent by the leaders of the church, hoping to catch him iu 
some hasty word for which they could accuse or arrest him ;3 and 
this same party still jDursued him.^ Some of his friends, or else 
the little children who had heard about him, shouted his name 
in the streets; and this displeased the priests very much, and 
gave them a chance to accuse him of making a disturbance, and 
trying to put himself in power. ^ 

Besides this, Jesus was offended at many of the religious prac- 
tices which he saw in Jerusalem, and does not seem to have con- 

1 Luke ii. 41. 2 Matt, xxvii. 55, 56 ; Johu xix. 25. 

3 Matt. xix. 3. 4 Matt. xxii. 15, 23, 4L 5 Matt. xxi. 9, 15. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 107 

sidered the city or the Temple such holy places as the other Jews 
thought them. At any rate, he had more than ever to say about 
the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Scribes,^ and once, as we have 
seen, became so indignant with the traders who sold cattle and 
changed money inside the Temple that he drove a party of them 
out into the street. ^ Instead of admiring the splendor of the 
Temple, as others did, he felt only the corrupt way in which God 
was worshipped there, and the ruin that was sure to come on 
both the Temple and the worshippers, unless some great change 
were made.^ 

All this naturally offended the Jewish priests and rulers, and 
made them fear that the people would grow discontented by lis- 
tening to such words, and lose faith in their religion. So they 
determined that Jesus must die. Jesus knew this very well, 
and understood of course before he came to Jerusalem what 
risks he would run if he came there ; but he continued to teach 
and preach just as he had done in Galilee, thinking no doubt 
that if he were to suffer, the truth which he taught would be all 
the more likely to prevail. 

EEFERENCES. 

Lives of Jesus; Hase's Life, pp. 191, 203; "The Jesus of History" 
(B. ii. chap, vii.); "Bible for Young" (v. chap, xxii., xxvii., xxviii.); 
(B.L. iii. 270-284, 335-393); "Illustrated Renan," pp. 196, 205, 229, 248; 
Greg's " Scenes from the Life of Jesus." 

1 Matt, xxiii. 2 Matt. xxi. 12 3 Matt. xxiv. 1, 2. 



LESSON XXXII. 

DEATH OF JESUS. 

1. What was the last meeting between Jesus and his disci- 
ples? 

2. Tell what happened at the last supper. 

3. What do you think is meant by Luke xxii. 19 ? 

4. Where was Gethsemane, and what happened there ? 

5. Tell what Judas did, and what you think of his character. 

6. What charge did the Jews bring against Jesus ? 

7. Wlio was Pilate, and what part did he take ? 

8. What do you think of him ? 

9. Tell the circumstances of Jesus' death. 

Texts: Matt. xxvi. 39, 41; Mark xv. 17; Luke xxiii. 34; John xiii. 14. 

NOTES. 

At last the danger which Jesus had feared ever since he reached 
Jerusalem really came. His enemies made arrangements to 
seize him when he was alone, and unfortunately one of his own 
disciples was ready to help them to do it. This was Judas Is- 
Kariot, who had the charge of their common purse. It may be 
that he was naturally fond of money, so that when the priests 
offered a bribe of thirty pieces of silver he could not resist it, 
even if he had to betray a master whom he loved ; but possibly 
he thought, as the other disciples did, that if Jesus was really 
the Messiah, he could easily escape from his enemies if they 
attacked him. At any rate, he told them of a time and place 
where they might find Jesus by himself. 

This was just at the beginning of the Passover; either at the 
feast itself ^ or on the night before the feast, when Jesus and his 
disciples met together for their evening meal.^ It was a very 
sad supper, for Jesus evidently felt that danger was near, and 

1 Matthew, Mark, Luke. 2 John xiii. 1. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 109 

spoke and acted as if he should never meet his disciples again. 
There are two or three descriptions of this supper, coming per- 
haps from different disciples, and so differing a good deal from 
each other, as is apt to happen when several persons describe the 
same event. Each one tells of some striking act of Jesus in 
those last hours w^hich had fixed itself in his memory. One tells 
how Jesus W'Cnt from one disciple to another, w^ashing their feet 
as servants usually did to guests, and wiping them with a towel. 
In this way Jesus, on leaving his disciples, set them a beautiful 
example of humility and brotherly love.^ A second writer, for- 
getting this incident, tells of another which the first did not men- 
tion. He remembered how Jesus passed the bread and wine to 
his disciples as they reclined at table, comparing the bread to 
his own body, and the wdne to his blood, which were so soon to 
perish, and begging them to remember him whenever they did 
the same again. The w^ords which he used (^' this is my body," 
'^ this is my blood ") seem strange to us, but were very natural 
in the East, where figures of speech are used so much, and the 
disciples long afterw^ards recalled them, and understood what he 
meant. 2 The washing of the feet w^as seldom repeated among 
the disciples, although Jesus enjoined it upon them quite as much 
as the other act; ^ but the passing of the bread and wine in mem- 
ory of him became afterwards a regular practice among them, 
and in course of time was turned into a religious rite quite dif- 
ferent from what Jesus had intended. 

Later in the evening, after the supper was over, Jesus went out 
into a place on the Mount of Olives called Gethsemane, w^here 
his sorrow overcame him, and he passed through a scene of great 
suffering, as he thought of the cruel death which he was so sure 
awaited him. The disciples, not thinking of danger, or believ- 
ing that he had power to resist all violence, fell asleep quite un- 
disturbed; but Jesus prayed in agony for God to save him, if it 
were possible, from the trial which was before him. It was the 
saddest and hardest moment of his life, and his struggle shows 
more plainly than anything else that Jesus' greatness was owing, 

1 John xiii. 4-17. 2 Matt. xxvi. 28-29 ; Luke xxii. 19-20. 

3 John xiii. 14, 15. 



110 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

not to his being above the trials which others feel, but to his 
being able to overcome all trials. The calm and beautiful way 
in which he met this suffering, and his words of entire submis- 
sion to God, " not my will but thine be done/' have helped men 
ever since to meet their greatest sorrows. 

Just at this time, a party of Jewish priests and Koman sol- 
diers, led by Judas, came suddenl}^ upon Jesus, and, without 
meeting any resistance from him, seized him and carried him 
away. The disciples, astonished that the Messiah of the Jews 
could allow himself to be made prisoner, and perhaps losing for 
the moment their confidence in him, forsook him at once and 
fled. Jesus was taken first to the High Priest's palace, where 
the great Council of the Jews, called the Sanhedrin, was assem- 
bled to try him. Formerly, this Council had power to put of- 
fenders to death, but under the Romans they could only bring 
forward charges while the Komans inflicted the punishment. 
The charge which they brought against Jesus was that he had 
allowed himself to be called, or had called himself, the Messiah 
or King of the Jews. This they declared was blasphemy against 
God, and so was worthy of death by their law.^ Then they took 
him before the Koman governor Pilate to be condemned. Pilate 
fotmd nothing w^orthy of death in Jesus, and would gladly have 
spared him ; but as the Jews declared that he not only had vio- 
lated their laws, but might also rebel against the Emperor, ^ and 
as the Romans never cared to interfere with the religion of con- 
quered nations, Jesus was finally delivered into the hands of his 
countrymen to be put to death. 

Had the Jews sentenced him he would have been stoned, but 
as the Roman death-punishment was crucifixion, Jesus was led 
away that very day with two thieves, and the three were cruci- 
fied side by side, l^o tortures could be more cruel or painful ; 
bui Jesus bore them without resistance or struggle, uttering only 
a single cry when the agony was greatest, which some understood 
as a cry of despair, 3. but which others thought was *' Father, into 
thy hands I commend my spirit."^ Still others thought he 

1 Matt. xxvi. 63-66; John xix. 7; Levit. xxiv. 16. 2 Luke xxiii. 2. 
S Matt, xxvii. 46 ; Mark xv. 34. ^ Luke xxiii. 46. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. Ill 

simply said, **It is finished." ^ Among his last words were, 
*' Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.'* ^ 

His death was a noble ending of a holy and heroic life. Sad 
as his sufferings were, yet in no other way could he have shown 
so plainly what his true spirit was, or left the world so grand an 
example. What seemed at the time, even to his disciples, the 
utter failure of his purposes, proved in the end a great victory; 
for, by destroying men's false ideas about the Messiah, it pre- 
pared the world to understand the better truth he had to teach. 
His short life proved the richest and most useful to the world, 
that had ever been spent on earth. 

REFERENCES. 

Farrar's " Life of Christ ; " Ease's " Life of Jesus," pp. 203-229 ; Schenkel's 
"Character of Jesus," ii. sec. 7; Furness's "Jesus; " "Bible for Young," 
vi. b. i.; (B. L. iii. 407-461); De Quincey's "Theological Essays," i. p. 147; 
"Rabbi Jeshua;" Longfellow's "Divine Tragedy" (3d Passover) ; Story's 
" Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem ; " Psalms cxiii. to cxviii. (sung at Passover 
Supper) ; "Illustrated Renan," pp. 240, 252, 256, 260, 264, 272, 276, 289, 293, 
297; Bach's "Passion Music." 

1 John xix. 30. 2 Luke xxiii. 34. 



LESSON XXXIII. 

THE GATHERING OF THE DISCIPLES. 

1. What became of the disciples after Jesus' death? 

2. Why do yoii think they deserted him ? 

3. What hope of theirs was disappointed by his death? 

4. AVhat new idea did they form about him ? 

5. What did they mean when they spoke of his '' coming?'' 

6. How did tlieir idea of death and heaven differ from ours ? 

7. How did they liv^e in Jerusalem? 

8. What kind of worship did they have ? 

9. How did they differ from other Jews? 

Texts : Matt. xvi. 28 ; Luke xxiv. 32 ; John xiv. 3, 18. 

NOTES. 

When Jesus was seized and crucified, his disciples, as we have 
seen, all deserted him. Peter, to be sure, followed him to the 
High Priest's house; but there his courage failed him, and when 
he was charged w^ith being a follower of Jesus, he denied that he 
had ever seen him. In one of the Gospels, the beloved disciple 
is mentioned as being near the cross with the three Marys when 
Jesus died;l but if this was so, he was the only disciple there. 
This does not seem very brave certainly; but we must remember 
that the Jews never supposed their Messiah could suffer violence. 
They even believed that when the Messiah really came he would 
live forever. 2 No doubt they had supposed that if the Roman sol- 
diers attempted to seize Jesus, he would strike them all dead and 
escape from their hands. When, instead of this, he was carried 
before Pilate, and put to death on the cross like a criminal, they 
were terrified and bewildered, and were almost ready to believe 
that they had been deceived, and that Jesus was no Messiah at 

1 John xix. 26. 2 John xii. 34. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 113 

all.i For some time they gave up all their hopes, and went back 
to Galilee in despair. ^ 

Very soon, however, perhaps within a year, they began to feel 
that, even though Jesus had gone, he had accomplished a great 
work, and had left much for them to do. Though he had per- 
ished, his truth had not, and they were bound to teach it to the 
world in honor of his memory. Besides, they remembered his 
saying something to them, which they could not understand at 
the time, about coming to them before they died, to establish his 
kingdom.^ Perhaps he was not really dead then, after all; or 
even if he had died, might he not perhaps come back to them, 
and begin his reign? Certainly, as they thought, if he was the 
real Messiah he must come. 

If their idea of death had been like ours, they could not have 
had such a serious expectation as this. But it was very different 
from ours. They thought that those who died remained under 
ground until the great day of judgment, when all were to rise, body 
and soul together, and pass up to heaven, where the good would 
live with God forever. ^ They thought of heaven as a particular 
place, like another earth, beyond the clouds; and even supposed 
that some of their ancestors, like Enoch and Elijah, had been 
carried away to this upper world, without dying, and might per- 
haps return. Elijah was expected to return to earth at any time.^ 

So it happened that the idea began soon to spread among the 
disciples that Jesus had not really died, but had been snatched 
up into heaven like Elijah, and would by and by come back to 
the earth, as he had promised, and found the Messiah's kingdom. 
Some thought they had actually seen him w^alking about on earth 
after his crucifixion, though they could not at all agree as to 
where he had appeared.^ Others said they had been to the grave 
two days after his body was laid there, and found it empty. "^ 

1 Luke xxiv. 21. 

2 Matt, xxviii. 16 ; Mark xvi. 7 ; John. xxi. 1 ; but compare Luke xxiv. 49. 

3 Matt. xvi. 28; xxiv. 34. 

4 1 Thess. iv. 13-17. See Alger's "Doctrine of a Future Life," Part ii. 
chap. 8, 9. 

5 Malachi iv. 5; Matt. xi. 14; xvi. 2: John i. 21. 

6 Matt, xxviii. 16, 17; Luke xxiv. 13, 15, 36, 50, 51; John xxi. 1, 4. 
■^ Luke xxiv. 3, 12 ; John xx. 2-7. 



114 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

So all kinds of reports arose, and the disciples, who at first had 
been so hopeless, took heart again, and began to look for their 
Master's return. For many years they clung to this expectation, 
and talked constantly of his coming as something that was sure 
to happen during their lifetime. ^ 

In this hope, the disciples came back to Jerusalem as the place 
where Jesus was most likely to appear, or at any rate where 
they could best preach about him; and there, as the numbers 
grew, they lived together as a great family, owning everything 
in common, dividing their property with each other, and going 
about from house to house to eat and drink. ^ They made no 
attempt at first to form a new church. They were all Jews, 
and as Jesus had always attended the synagogues and the 
Temple, and had left them no directions about church or wor- 
ship, they went on as he had done, worshipping at the Temple, 
observing the Jewish feasts, reading the Jewish scriptures, and 
following all the Jewish customs as to sacrifices, meats, and all 
other forms. If Jesus was really to return, and destroy all 
kingdoms and rulers and churches, as the Messiah was expected 
to do, there was of course no reason for beginning any new 
order of things mitil he came. So the followers of Jesus went 
on for several years, living and worshipping like other Jews, 
attracting little attention from those about them, but looking 
eagerly every year and every day for the Messiah's return. 

REFERENCES. 

Hausrath's "New Testament Times;" Nicolas' ''Doctrines religieuses 
des Juifs ; " Renan's " Apostles," chap. i.-v. ; " Fragments of Christian His- 
tory " (J. H. Allen); Arnold's ''Literature and Dogma," chap, vii.; Alger's 
"Doctrine of a Future Life; " " Bible for Young," vi. 137-161 ; (B. L. iii. 
462-481); "Illustrated Renan," p. 264. 

1 1 Cor. i. 7; xv. 23 ; 1 Thess. ii. 19 ; iv. 15; Jas. v. 7. 

2 Acts ii. 44-46. 



LESSON XXXIV. 
BEGINNING OF THE CHRISTIAN" CHURCH. 

1. Why did the disciples leave Jerusalem again ? 

2. To what other places did they go? 

3. When and where were they first called Christians? 

4. Why had they not been called so earlier? 

5. Who was Paul? 

6. Tell something about his journeyings and the countries 
which he visited. 

7. What were the first letters which he wrote? 

8. What led him to write them? 

9. What opponents had he ? 

10. Were there any Christian writings before? 

11. During what years were most of Paul's letters written? 

Texts: Acts xvii. 23; 1 Cor. ii. 9; xiii. 1, 13; Gal. v. 1, 9. 

NOTES. 

For some time the work of the disciples went on very quietly 
in Jerusalem; but by and by their constant preaching about 
Jesus excited attention and brought them into trouble. Some 
of them were seized and beaten, others were thrown into prison, 
others still were driven out of Jerusalem, and so began to teach 
and preach elsewhere. In this way the teachings of Jesus were 
spread through all parts of Samaria and Galilee, and even into 
the foreign countries round about Judsea, especially the cities of 
the Mediterranean, where the Jews were accustomed to trade 
with Greek merchants. One of these places was Antioch of 
Syria, at that time the chief city of the East, and third largest 
city (next to Rome and Alexandria) in the world. Here many 
converts were made, both among the Jews and among the 
Greeks. Here, too, the followers of Jesus first received a name, 
and became a distinct church. Until then they had not sepa- 



116 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

rated themselves from the Jews, and so needed no new name, 
though they were sometimes nicknamed Nazarenes.^ But in 
Antioch they formed a party by themselves, and the people, 
hearing them talk so much about Christ, and supposing this 
was their leader's name, began to call them '' Christians," a 
name which clung to them always afterwards. ^ In this way 
a new church was at last formed, and Jews and Christians 
became more and more unlike each other. 

Among the new converts was a Jew named Saul, who had 
been before one of their bitterest enemies, but w^ho became now 
more zealous than any of the earliest disciples to spread the 
teachings of Jesus into new countries. Joining the Christians 
at Antioch he started off immediately for Asia Minor, and after- 
wards made journeys into Europe, visiting Macedonia and 
Greece, and forming little churches wherever he went. After 
becoming a Christian he changed his name from Saul to Paul; 
and as he brought many more Greeks than Jews into his 
churches, he was called the Apostle to the Gentiles, or Heathen. 

All this time there had been no Bible nor any writings of any 
kind. As Jesus had written nothing himself, and had nevec 
told his disciples to do so, they had no Scriptures except the 
rolls of the Prophets and the Law which were read in the Jew- 
ish synagogues. All that the people knew about Jesus or his 
words was w^hat the disciples told them when they preached. 
Even after churches were formed there were no Christian Scrip- 
tures read in them until more than a hundred years after Jesus 
died. 

But Paul, who had studied with the most learned Jewish 
teachers and was more of a scholar than the other disciples, fell 
into the way of writing letters to the places which he had 
visited, to give them advice, or send them friendly messages, or 
reprove them for their faults. These letters were sent back 
and forth among the churches,^ and after his death what re- 
mained of them were collected and called Paul's Epistles. 
They are mere letters, to be sure, but are none the less interest- 
ing for that, and are quite as valuable to us as if they were 

1 Acts xxiv. 5. 2 Acts xi. 26. 3 Col. i^. 16. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 117 

books of history. You will find them near the end of the New 
Testament, but they are really the oldest Christian writings to 
be found, and were the beginning of the Christian Bible. 

The first of these letters were probably tw^o which he wrote 
to the church at Thessalonica from Corinth, an old and wealthy 
city of Greece, where he spent a year or two during his first 
visit to Europe.^ Just before coming to Corinth he had visited 
Thessalonica in Macedonia, where he had preached for three 
Sabbaths in a Jewish synagogue, and drawn together a little 
circle of Jew^s and Greeks. ^ He had been finally driven from 
the city by the Jews, and had gone directly from there to 
Corinth, where he WTote two letters to the young church, urging 
them all to be faithful under their persecutions, and explaining 
some things which he could not tell them when he was there. 
These are called the Epistles to the Thessalonians, and were 
written about A. D. 53, twenty years after Jesus died. 

Not long after this, perhaps in the year 55 or 56, Paul had 
occasion to send a letter to the churches which he had founded 
in Galatia, a province of Asia Minor. This was called the 
Epistle to the Galatians, and w^as written under somewhat 
peculiar circumstances. Paul had been a very rigid Jew, but 
on becoming a Christian had given up most of the Jewish rites 
and taught his followers not to regard the old feasts, allowing 
them to observe the Sabbath or not, as they chose. The older 
disciples, however, such as Peter and John, opposed him 
strongly, and insisted that it was just as important for Chris- 
tians to be circumcised, and observe the Sabbath and Passover, 
as for the Jews. They did not like to see any changes made in 
the ancient Jewish customs. They even sent messengers to 
the Galatian churches, after Paul had left, warning the people 
against him, and saying that as he had never seen or followed 
Jesus during his lifetime, he was not a real apostle. Paul 
looked upon this as a great interference with his work, as it 
really was, and wrote a very stirring letter to the Galatians, 
declaring that he had quite as much right to be called an 
apostle as any of the others, begging the Galatians not to go 

1 Acts xviii. 1, 11, 18. 2 Acts xvii. 1-9. 



118 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

back to Jewish forms and customs, and accusing his opponents 
of trying to turn his own church against him.^ 

About the same time, still greater trouble arose in his church 
at Corinth. Corinth was a rich and corrupt city, and the 
young Christian church had not wholly escaped its temptations. 
Evil habits had crept in, and some of their sacred gatherings, 
held in memory of Jesus himself, had been turned into drunken 
feasts. 2 Beside this, the Corinthians, like other Greeks, being 
fond of discussing and reasoning, had taken the liberty to 
criticise Paul's teachings, and had called some of his most 
important doctrines in question. ^ His enemies who had troubled 
him in Galatia had followed him to Corinth also, and were 
bringing confusion and division into the Christian ranks. Four 
different parties arose, one calling itself after Paul, another 
after Peter, another after a certain Apollos, another still after 
Christ himself.* Paul feared that these divisions would break 
up his little church entirely, and wrote them two long letters, 
begging them to forget their differences and follow neither him 
nor any other disciple, but only Jesus. These were called the 
Epistles to the Corinthians, and were written about a. d. 57 
or 58. 

Beside all these, Paul also wrote letters to the churches in 
Rome, in Ephesus, in Philippi, and in Colosse, all which places 
you can find on the map. No doubt others still were written 
and lost,^ but fortunately these were saved. Some letters not 
really written by Paul were afterwards called his ^ to tempt 
people to read them, or else because he had wTitten so many 
that all which had no name were supposed to be his. 

Paul was finally taken prisoner in Jerusalem and carried to 
Rome to be tried. After this nothing is known about him; 
but in these few years he had done more than any one else to 
teach the world about Jesus and his truth. These little gather- 
ings, collected by different disciples in Jerusalem, Antioch, 
Asia Minor, and Greece, were the beginnings of the Christian 
Church. 

1 Gal. i. 1 ; v. 1, 2. 21 Cor. xi. 20, 21. 3 1 Cor. xv. 12, 3$. 

4 1 Cor. i. 12. 6 Col. iv. 16. 

6 Those to Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and The Hebrews. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 119 

REFERENCES. 

Howson's " Apostle Paul ; " Baur's " Paul ; " Renan's " Apostles " and 
" St. Paul; " Zeller's " Commentary on the Acts; " " Bible for Young," vi. 
162-374; (B. L. 481-643); Chadwick's "Bible of To-Day;" "Teachers' 
Notes," Oct., 1877; Conybeare and Howson's "Life and Epistles of St. 
Paul; " " Fragments of Christian History. " 



LESSON XXXV. 
THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

1. What were the first Christian writings? 

2. Who else wrote Epistles beside Paul? 

3. Mention the three earliest Gospels. 

4. Tell something of the way in which they were written. 

5. When was the Book of Acts written ? 

6. Tell something about the fourth Gospel and how it diJffers 
from the other three. 

7. By what time were all the New Testament books written ? 

8. By what time were they collected together ? 

9. What w^as meant by " Scriptures "in the first and second 
centuries ? 

10. How was it determined what books should belong to the 
New Testament ? 

11. In what sense is the New Testament sacred? 

Texts: James i. 27; ii. 26; iii. 5, 11; 2 Peter iii. 4; 1 John iv. 8. 

NOTES. 

Paul's letters to his different churches were, as we have seen, 
the first Christian writings, and were written for the most part 
between the years 50 and 60. This is a very good date for you 
all to remember. But other letters beside Paul's were written of 
course, and some of them have been saved. 

One of these is called the Epistle of James ; James being per- 
haps the brother of Jesus, though there were so many Jameses 
that we cannot be quite sure which this is. The letter is quite 
different from any of Paul's, as it has much more to say about 
conduct and duty than about religious belief. The writer 
thought '^ works," as he calls good deeds, more important than 
'* faith," and has some very fine passages about the use of the 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 121 

tongue and the treatment of the poor. Altogether it is the most 
practical epistle in the New Testament. 

Then, there are two whose author was not known with cer- 
tainty. Some thought Peter wrote them, others were sure he did 
not, but that one at least was written after his death. In the 
end, however, his name was given them, and they are always 
called the 1st and 2d Epistles of Peter. Whether they are really 
his or not, they give us very interesting pictures of the early 
Christian faith. 

Still another long letter, almost as early as Paul's, was writ- 
ten to show what was to be done with the old Scriptures or the 
Temple service, now that the Christians had separated fi'om the 
Jewish church. Some thought that the whole Jewish religion, 
Scriptures and all; should be given up ; others that as much as 
possible should be still kept. The Epistle to the Hebrews answers 
the question by saying that the Old Testament was never meant 
to be literally understood, but w^as an allegory throughout; that 
the forms and sacrifices were all symbols to prepare the w^ay for 
Jesus, and that he was the true high-priest, though in a spiritual 
sense. Now that Christ had really come, as this writer thought, 
the old faith was quite useless, and ought to pass away.^ Who 
wrote the letter we cannot tell ; though it was long thought to 
have been by Paul himself. 

After this w^hole generation had died, some people began to 
doubt again whether Jesus was really the Christ, or even whether 
such a person had lived at all. To answer these questions, two 
or three short letters were written, called afterwards, for some 
reason, the three Epistles of John. In reality they were not 
written till after his death, and hardly any one at first believed 
that they were his ; ^ but when the New Testament books were 
finally collected, the name of John was given to these. 

The only other writing which belongs to the earliest times was 
a very singular sort of prophecy, to prove that Jesus was certainly 
coming back to the world at once, and to predict what would 



1 Heb. viii. 13. 

2 The 2d and 3d were rejected by Irenseus and Tertullian, a. d. 200, and 
by Origen, A. d. 254:. 



122 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

happen when he came ; how Rome would fall and Christ reign in 
Jerusalem a thousand years ; how the dead w^ould then rise and 
the whole world be judged ; how the earth and the sea would pass 
aw^ay, and there would be "new heavens and a new earth." 
^N'one of these things really happened, as we now know; but it is 
interesting to see what people's expectations were in those days, 
and how long the early Christians held to the belief that Jesus 
w^ould come back to them. The book is called the '' Revelation 
of St. John," and was written about a. d. 69. 

As time passed on, and Jesus did not return, and all his com- 
panions grew old and died, the churches began to collect all the 
accounts they could find of his life and words. It was thirty 
years or more after his death before they began to think of this, 
and much, of course, had been forgotten; but so many things 
had been told over and over again, that almost every church had 
its traditions about Jesus, not always agreeing with each other, 
but quite too precious to be lost. These were soon collected and 
made into complete narratives. Probably the same thing was 
going on at the same time in different places; for before many 
years, a number of such accounts of the life of Jesus appeared. ^ 

What became of most of these we cannot tell, but toward the 
end of the first century three remained, called the Gospels of 
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which seemed so complete, and so 
nearly alike, that they came into common use, and have lasted 
until now. Perhaps these Gospels sprang up in different cities; 
Matthew's in Jerusalem possibly, Mark's in Antioch, Luke's in 
Rome. Or, perhaps, Mark's, which is much the shortest, was 
written before the others, and was filled out by Matthew, who 
wished to add some of Jesus' conversations and discourses, and 
finally copied again by Luke, wdth other changes, for the special 
use of the Greek Christians, to whom he belonged. But these 
are only guesses, as everything must be about books of whose 
origin we know so little. Probably they were all different, when 
first written, from what they are now, and w^ere a good many 
years in growing to their present size. Their names w^ere given 
them many years after they were first used. 

1 Luke i. 1, 2. 



FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 123 

At the same time that these Gospels were compiled, or some- 
what later, all the records of the years following Jesus' death 
were collected, especially all that was known of Peter and Paul. 
This book was called the " Acts of the Apostles," and was writ- 
ten probably about A. D. 125. It is very interesting indeed, 
though the accounts of Paul differ somewhat from what he says 
of himself, as though the writer had not read all of Paul's epis- 
tles. 

Perhaps you have wondered why I speak of only three Gospels, 
when in your New Testament you find four. This is because the 
fourth Gospel is of a different kind from the others and was writ- 
ten much later. Soon after Jesus' death, as we have seen, peo- 
ple began to question whether he was really the Messiah, and 
whether so wonderful a being as he then seemed was actually a 
man like other men. Some held strange philosophical notions 
about him, thinking that he was not a m.an at all, but a divine 
being who had always existed in heaven as one of many spirits 
attending upon Deity, and had been sent to the earth by God, to 
take the form of Jesus, and then return to heaven again. One of 
these philosophers wrote the fourth Gospel. He calls Jesus the 
'* Word of God,'' a term which was much used in those days, 
but sounds strangely now ; and he shows, in very poetical and 
beautiful language, how wonderful a being Jesus was. It is a 
much more difficult Gospel to understand than either of the 
others, but it shows what deep thought was given in those days 
to religious subjects, and what different ideas there then were 
of God and heaven from ours. Like so many other books of the 
New Testament, this was long thought to have been written by 
the apostle John, who lived to be very old, and wrote this, it was 
said, just before his death. Many believe now that it was writ- 
ten much later than that, and in any case could hardly be the 
work of just such a man as John appears to be in the three 
other Gospels.^ But this is a question on which there are many 
different opinions; and fortunately the book is just as beautiful 
and valuable, whether one person wrote it or another. 

By about a. d. 150, all the books of the New Testament were 

1 Mark iii. 17 ; x. 35-37 ; Luke ix. 54. 



124 FIRST LESSONS ON THE BIBLE. 

probably written. For many years they were used separately, 
some ill one church, some in another; and it was a long time be- 
fore any one knew or accepted them all. A list of these books 
was made out about the year 140, in which only one Gospel is 
mentioned, and only ten Epistles of Paul.^ No such list for two 
hundred years corresponds exactly with what we now call the New 
Testament books; and hardly anybody in those times mentioned 
Peter's Epistles, or James's, or two of John's, with the rest. No 
one spoke of the " New Testament " then, but only of " The Gos- 
pel " and " The Apostle," as in old times they had spoken of the 
Law and the Prophets. For more than a hundred years, none 
of these writings were read in the churches, because they were 
not considered sacred, like the Jewish Scriptures, but were only 
for common use. If you had spoken to any Christian at that 
time about the " Scriptures," he would have understood you to 
mean the Old Testament only. It was not till nearly a. d. 400 
that the churches determined which books really belonged to the 
New Testament, and which did not;^ and even after that there 
was much difference of opinion. 

So the New Testament was almost four hundred years in grow- 
ing into its present form. The different books were chosen out 
of a great many, at different times, and by different persons; 
and there was nothing of course to prevent mistakes of judg- 
ment or opinion. But the writings which were selected are cer- 
tainly very precious, and we may well be content with them. The 
Gospels and Epistles did not depend on any action of churches or 
councils to make them holy. They are holy of themselves, as 
containing so many sacred truths, and as giving an account of 
the holiest events in man's history. 

REFERENCES. 

Davidson's '' Introduction to the New Testament; " Davidson's " Canon of 
the Bible ; " Bleek's " Introduction to the New Testament; " " Supernatural 
Religion," vol. ii. ; Schwegler's " Das nachapostolische Zeitalter," ii. 196; 
Kenan's " Evangiles ; " Smith's Bible Dictionary (art. Canon); Chadwick's 
"Bible of To-day;" Sunderland's "What is the Bible V " "Institute 
Essays; " "Unitarian Review," Nov., 1880, pp. 440-457 ; "Teacher's Notes," 
Oct., 1877, p. 15; Arnold's "Literature and Dogma," chap. vi. 

1 Marcion's. 2 Council of Carthage, a. d. 397. 



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